


The Stolen Child

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Spirited Away AU, Taisho Period, Tanuki Gaara, Trans Rock Lee, Yôkai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: Lee's first mistake was walking past the shrine.His second mistake was giving away his name.How a series of missteps led Lee into a land he never believed in, into the arms of a creature he never expected to encounter, and changed his life forever.
Relationships: Gaara/Rock Lee
Comments: 130
Kudos: 186





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shyalpacasweets (Thosesweetninjas)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thosesweetninjas/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a (belated) birthday present for Sweets! Sweets, I hope your birthday was absolutely fantastic. I am sorry this is so late, and that it ended up being so long.
> 
> This story will be 7 chapters. It's completely written, so I'll post a chapter every Saturday and Wednesday until it's done.
> 
>  **Warnings** this chapter for animal (sort of) injury, mild sexism, and mentions of cannibalism. Lee is not out to his loved ones, so there is some unintentional misgendering that is recalled but doesn't happen on-screen.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

\- W.B. Yeats, _The Stolen Child_

* * *

* * *

Lee’s first mistake was walking past the shrine. 

The shrine in the woods had been long-abandoned, said to be the dwelling of a _kamikakure_ , a hiding god, no longer worshipped and withdrawn from the human world. Its stone face was overgrown with moss and flecked with lichen, the post broken so it lay on its side.

It was also at the crossroads of two paths deep in the woods. 

Everyone knew what happened at crossroads. 

Everyone had heard the stories of those who took the wrong path and ended up in another world, snatched away by _tengu_ who bound them, taking them as wives or disciples, returning them years later or not at all. The boy who came back with his face white and his lips green with bamboo leaves. The girl who returned unable to speak, with a belly full of snails that crawled up and out her mouth every time she opened it to make a sound. 

Of course, those were all just stories. Tales to scare little kids off from wandering too deep in the woods or running off without their parents’ permission. No matter how many times Yamato the woodcutter leaned over the fire so its flames turned his eye sockets into shadowed, skull-like hollows and uttered spine-chilling lines, Lee never so much as shivered.

He was a pragmatist. He didn’t believe in nonsense or fairy tales.

* * *

“Come on, hurry up,” Neji yelled. The pocket of his plain _haori_ jacket was already stuffed to bursting with chestnuts.

“Just one second!” Lee called back. On the ground beneath the tree were the cast-off husks of chestnuts, looking like the dried shells of split-open sea urchins. “I just found a really good spot! I think I have _just_ enough room for a few more.”

“Tenten’s waiting for us. We’re going to be late!” 

“Just a moment!” Lee strained upwards to the upper branches of the chestnut tree. 

Then he heard the scream.

At first he thought it was a person, shrieking in pain. But as it continued, the noise began to warble and warp, something between the bleating of a goat and the chittering of a squirrel. And it was _loud_.

“Neji, do you hear that?” 

“It’s probably just some animal.” Neji crossed his arms over his chest. “Hunters lay traps all over this part of the woods. People aren’t the only things that eat chestnuts, you know.” 

“What if it’s hurt?”

“It probably _is_ hurt. What do you think traps are for?” Neji turned and started walking back towards the main path back to the village and Gai-sensei’s dojo. “You’re taking food out of someone’s mouth interfering with that.”

“I just want to check.”

“Fine.” The sound of Neji’s straw boots shuffling through the underbrush started to fade as he walked further away. “I’ll tell Gai-sensei you were late because you were rescuing some wounded animal. He’ll love that. You’re his favorite, after all.”

“Gai-sensei says we each have our own remarkable qualities,” Lee shouted over his shoulder, scaling up and over a fallen log. A few chestnuts fell from his pocket into the underbrush. 

Neji didn’t respond. For a moment, the woods were still and quiet.

Then the screaming started again.

Lee hurried in the direction of the sound. It got louder and louder, shriller and shriller. 

Lee bounded around a wide tree, and there in the leaf litter it was.

It was a tanuki. And the trap it had been caught in. Its mouth widened around a screech, teeth bared. Its front leg suspended it in the air, braced up between the two halves of the wood frame of the trap and secured by thick bow string. It was twisted at a horrible, unnatural angle, clearly broken. And yet the creature kept struggling against it, thrashing against the trap’s post and the tree it was secured to, claws leaving gouges in the wood. 

Lee gasped.

The tanuki froze and fell silent, looking at him. Its golden eyes were wide. For a moment it appeared … oddly intelligent. As if it knew why Lee was there.

Then it screeched again. Pitifully this time, its throat hoarse. 

Lee stooped down to the ground and outstretched his hand.

“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m here to help.” He crawled forward through the leaf litter, filthying up the knees of his pleated pants, the hem of his kimono dragging in the dirt. 

Lee wasn’t familiar with traps. Gai-sensei said it was against nature for people to eat any four-legged animal, so if they had meat at all, it was normally fish Tenten hauled from the river in her nets or swallows Neji shot from the sky with his small bow. 

The creature hung there, body limp, staring at him. 

Lee kept one hand out, palm open, and tried to make continued eye contact with the tanuki. 

“I’m a friend,” he said in the low, soothing voice he used to make the woodland squirrels come up and eat out of his hands. With his other hand, he rooted in the depths of his _obi_ sash for the hilt of his knife.

The knife was technically Neji’s. Lee wasn’t supposed to carry knives. It was unladylike, Gai-sensei said. 

(But Tenten could scale and fillet a fish faster than either of them, and nobody seemed to care that _she_ was a girl, as long as she was using the skill to prepare food for cooking … ) 

Anyway, Lee wasn’t a girl. Not that it mattered. And the knife was his, now. Neji had said so. Or rather, he had thrown it away after he got a new one from his wealthy uncle, and he didn’t tattle to Gai-sensei when he saw Lee snatching it out of the river. 

Neji’s old knife— _Lee’s_ knife—was a wood-handled thing with a flat blade, dull and lusterless from too much use. One-handed, Lee shook it from its lacquered sheath.

The tanuki’s eyes alit upon the knife. Its eerie dark pupils narrowed to pinpricks, until its eyes were all gold. It gnashed its teeth and shrieked, renewing its struggle.

“Please hold still!” Lee hissed. “I don’t want to hurt you! I just need to cut the string. If you keep moving like that, I might cut you on accident.” 

The tanuki eyed him warily, but it paused in its motions. 

Maybe it really _did_ understand Japanese, Lee thought. 

Even without understanding much about traps, the mechanism was simple enough, and Lee worked the blade of his knife between the two pieces of wood that held the creature’s limb in place, sawing at the waxed rope. With his free hand, he reached for the nape of the tanuki’s neck and gently grabbed the loose skin there, the same way he’d seen Nekobaa and her granddaughter Tamaki subdue an agitated cat. The fur there was very soft. 

“Just one more second,” he murmured. “Almost got it, and then I’ll take you back to the dojo and patch you up.”

With a final motion of the blade, the string snapped. The wooden bar of the trap sprang back and almost smacked Lee square in the nose, sending him flinching back. 

The tanuki took advantage of Lee’s distraction to swivel its head and bite his hand.

“Ouch!” Lee dropped his knife, and the tanuki leapt away.

“Wait!” Lee stood and shouted. “You’re still hurt!” 

Even limping horribly, the tanuki was incredibly fast, scurrying into the underbrush with its three functional legs wheeling widely. Clouds of downed leaves and dirt scattered in its wake.

Lee gave chase. 

“If you stay out here like that, you’ll die! There are boars around here, you know! And foxes! You’ll get eaten!” 

If the tanuki understood him, it clearly didn’t care. It slowed not one bit. 

In the haste of the pursuit, Lee hardly noticed how far he had strayed from the path back to the village. He certainly didn’t notice when he hopped over the downed stone post of the old shrine. He tore right across the diagonal of the crossroads, eyes fixed on the tanuki’s fluffy tail and scrambling movements. 

It seemed to be fatiguing as Lee pursued it. Lee was lucky to be fast, and he could run for kilometers without ever slowing. Maybe if he could just wear the tanuki out, he could grab it and carry it back to the village safely. He could wrap it in his _haori_ to keep it from biting again. Even if it was cold in the autumn woods, it wasn’t too far back to the village. At least, he thought so, as he chased the creature through trees and past stone formations he no longer recognized. Lee had grown up in these woods, and yet he had never encountered the jagged stones that grew more numerous the further he gave chase, nor the thin, papery barks of the trees that spiralled out of the ground with trunks that curled like snakes, their dusky orange crowns nearly touching the fading pink of the sky. 

He had little time to think on the oddity of it all as the tanuki’s red-striped tail vanished downwards.

Lee hastened forward. 

By the time he noticed he had stepped over the edge of a wooded crevasse, it was too late.

His legs went out from under him. One of his straw boots snared in a bramble and was ripped right off his foot as he fell on his rear and began to slide. Down, down he went towards the bottom of the crevasse. Thin branches whipped past his face, and he grabbed for them to no avail, leaves stripping free between his snatching fingers and bark scraping his palms. 

He hit the bottom of the valley with a thud. 

He groaned.

The tanuki was nowhere to be seen. 

Lee looked up behind him, trying to see if there was some path back up the steep hill. The sun was setting, and in the dim twilight, the crest of the ridge high above him was foggy and invisible. He could scarcely tell where the treeline ended and the sky began. 

He patted the pocket of his _haori_. There was only a handful of chestnuts left, all the rest of them scattered in his fall. Lee cursed under his breath, then immediately clapped his hands and said a silent prayer of forgiveness. Not only had he lost his knife back by the trap, but now his boot was at the top of the ridge as well, and he didn’t even have what he had come into the woods for in the first place!

 _And_ the tanuki was gone. Injured somewhere and soon to be dead.

It was going to be a miserable, shameful night when he made it back to the dojo.

 _If_ he made it back to the dojo. Because as he looked around the bottom of the valley in which he found himself, he didn’t recognize a thing. 

He stooped and loosened the ties of his remaining boot, tucking it into his sash. No use wearing just one shoe. He would just have to tread carefully, which would only make the journey back to the village all the slower and more arduous. 

He looked back up at the cliff’s face. It was practically sheer, with only shallow-rooted scrub brush for handholds. It was a miracle Lee had slid down its side rather than simply falling to his death. Without his boots and his knife, it would be impossible to scale it. 

Lee looked up and down the little valley. Neither direction seemed particularly more ‘right’. Lee’s village was to the west of the forest, but by the position of the setting sun, the valley must have run north to south. He needed to find a place where it sloped up more gently, so he could scale the cliff and get back to the familiar woods and paths. 

He exhaled through his nose. He tightened his now-filthy _obi_ with a sharp tug of his hands and pulled his jacket more closely around himself. His bare toes clenched in the dirt and twigs. It was starting to grow chill, and distantly Lee could hear the cries of the foxes rising from their dens for their nighttime hunt. 

Well. The only way out was through. 

He picked a direction, and began to walk.

* * *

Hours later, Lee was thirsty, exhausted, and definitively _lost_. 

He had found what he thought were a few promising shallow paths up the cliff face, but every time he started trying to climb up them, he gradually found himself sliding back down again, down the earth sloping back to the valley floor. He had torn the hem of his kimono on a low-lying briar bush, and his face was all scraped from where he lost his handhold on a thin tree, its needles catching him across the cheek as he slid back down to the bottom of the basin. 

He untied the end of his braid and shook out his hair. Twigs and dirt and bits of leaf litter scattered the ground. 

At least it was a full moon tonight, so his surroundings were easy enough to see, the damp fallen leaves edged in silver. The shadows loomed and warped strangely, but Lee chalked it up to his nervousness getting the best of him. He hadn’t encountered another living creature, although their eyes flashed at him from the dark on either side of the valley floor, their cries through the trees low and mournful. 

He peered ahead, narrowing his eyes. Maybe he should turn back. Maybe if he waited at the foot of the cliff, Neji and Tenten would be able to follow his trail through the woods and find him by morning. Then they could all work out a way for him to get back home by daylight. 

Then he saw a light. A flicker, far away and sputtering and golden. A fire?

It was followed by another. Then another and another and another, until a long golden row of them stretched out far beyond where Lee’s eyes could see.

Someone was lighting paper lanterns! 

While the path wasn’t the way back to Lee’s village, lanterns meant people. And people hopefully meant food and shelter and a place to rest until morning when he could find his way back to the main thoroughfares and return home. 

Filled with a renewed energy, he sprinted towards the lights. 

There were so many of them, and the lantern lighter must have been very far ahead and moving fast, because what started as specks of light condensed into a single, thin streak of golden light in the distance. 

It was odd, Lee thought, rushing past them. He could see the fire just fine, but the lanterns themselves must have had very thin screens, because he could see neither their paper nor their frames. 

It was a wonder, with paper that thin, that they didn’t burn themselves up and fizzle out. 

Although … Lee looked behind him. The path over his shoulder was dark. Where had the moon gone?

Lee took a tentative step forward. The light he had just passed guttered and hissed itself to smoke. 

He took another few steps. Again, the light vanished as soon as he had passed it. And when he peered up into their bizarre, warping light, he saw no wick, no lantern at all.

These were no lanterns. 

They were _oni-bi_. Demon fires. He had never seen them up close, but sometimes they appeared over the graves in the cemetery, dancing with eerie color. A blind priest had gone out to play _biwa_ for them once, it was said, and when he tried to escape from the ghosts who loved his songs they had taken his ears as payment. 

Lee scrubbed at his eyes. This couldn’t be happening. _Oni-bi_ weren’t _real_. They were just a story made up to keep kids from going into the cemetery and vandalizing the stones. Lee wasn’t allowed to give funeral rites, but Neji said the mouths of dead bodies gave off gases you could light a candle over. Demon fires were just that, the lanterns and candles left in the graveyard sparking the gases coming off fresh graves. 

But there were no headstones here. Just balls of flame, suspended above the earth in thin air, whispering and shuddering. 

Maybe Lee was just … hallucinating. Gai-sensei had told him once about a time that he trained so hard and so long that he thought he was speaking to his father, who had been dead for at least twenty years. And when Kakashi-san finally found him and dippered some water into his mouth, sensei realized he had been speaking to a bush. 

Lee _had_ been walking for a very long time. And he’d had nothing to eat or drink since lunch. He must have just been overtired, so that his dreams had slipped before his waking eyes to confuse him into sleep. 

He tore his eyes away from the flames. Just ahead, the valley’s sheer walls opened up into a crossroads. Ghost fires lit the way in both directions, showing that the valley floor met here with a cobblestone-paved path. 

From the left side of the cross path, Lee heard a clattering. 

Something with long, many jointed limbs began to pull itself across the intersection. 

Lee covered his mouth to deaden his gasp, stepping back into the shadows where the demon fires had gone out. 

The creature climbed its way into the firelight with two—no, four—no, six—no, _eight_ spindly legs. It was dressed in all black and hooded, like the _bunraku_ performers Lee had seen once when a troupe passed through their village. 

But this was no man. Each of its long, thin legs was at least as tall as Lee was, a black draped body suspended in the middle like a corpse being carried. Or were they arms? Because each of them ended in a human hand, grasping at the edges of the stones to propel itself forward. 

It couldn’t be—no, it had to be! A _tsuchigumo_ —a pit-dwelling ground spider—and, dream or not, they were supposed to be vicious, violent man-eaters. Lee pressed himself back against the valley wall, trying to will himself invisible. 

The creature had almost finished crossing when it paused. Lee hardly dared to breathe. It raised its black-hooded head, sniffing the air. 

Then it turned, and one of its long arms seemed to stretch impossibly to grab Lee by the back collar of his kimono, pulling him into the light. 

Lee was too startled to struggle, his body gone deadweight. 

“Whaddya think you’re doing lurking back there in the— _Hey!_ ” The creature’s face craned forward as if its neck had elongated. It had the eyes of a man, but its face had been painted white just like a _bunraku_ puppet’s. “You’re that human!” 

He set Lee back to earth, and Lee glanced wildly up and down the pathways only to find that all the fires in the direction from whence he’d came had burned out. The moon had gone with them, leaving the path pitch black. Lee fumbled for his _obi_. He didn’t have his knife, but he still had its scabbard, and maybe if he could distract the creature or—or climb one of its legs and jump on its back, he could go for its eyes and—

One of the _tsuchigumo_ ’s long hands grabbed his bicep and prised his arm up into the air like it was nothing. Lee struggled against its iron grasp fruitlessly.

“Chill out, will ya?” The creature smiled, and inside its mouth were two sharp teeth like a spider’s fangs. “I’m not gonna hurt you, little … guy.” 

Lee’s eyes went wide. Outside of his own head, nobody had ever referred to him as a boy before. 

“Gaara’s been waiting for ya,” the creature continued. “And even I’m not dumb enough to try an’ eat someone Gaara’s taken a shine to.”

“Gaara? Who’s Gaara?”

Sensing Lee was too bewildered to struggle further, the spider released Lee’s arm. There was an extra joint in each of his fingers, Lee noticed, as his spindly hands patted some of the dust from the shoulders of Lee’s _haori_. 

“I forgot you guys haven’t been formally introduced. Might have to spiff ya up a little before you meet him. Man, you humans sure don’t know how to make clothes to withstand the elements, huh?” His painted mouth frowned. “Sorry, is that rude? You really look nothing like I expected.”

“What … did you expect?” 

“Well, Gaara didn’t mention the eyebrows, for one.” The spider shrugged with four of his jagged-boned shoulders. “Anyway, follow me. I’ll take you to him.” 

Lee stood there, shell-shocked, as the man-spider began to crawl in the direction he had been proceeding before. 

“You can call me Kankuro,” he said, swiveling his head on his unnaturally long neck to look back at Lee. “Or Big Brother. That’s what everyone else calls me.”

From just behind Kankuro came a wooden clopping noise, like the shoes of many horses. Lee turned to see red-painted _kokeshi_ dolls, swaddled in their identical wooden kimono with their white faces and uniform black haircuts. They hopped behind Kankuro on their rounded bases, clacking and clattering as they wobbled to and fro. They were followed by the spherical shapes of _daruma_ dolls, which looked more like colorful toy balls than actual dolls, as they were only round faces with no bodies. Their carved wooden faces distorted and scowled as dirt and sticks caught in their painted crevices, their toothy mouths scowling and pursing to blow the detritus from their faces as they rolled. 

The end of the procession was brought up by mechanical _karakuri_ puppets in ornate, miniature clothing and horsehair wigs, their clockwork joints whirring and clanging and whistling as they hobbled along behind. Some were seated on platforms and pulled themselves along the stone path with the wheeling motions of their arms, while others toddled on stiff-jointed legs, and yet more danced in repetitive, robotic patterns. 

Lee glanced back down the valley. He could run, he thought, and brave the pitch-black of the night with no shoes and no knife and no food. There might even be more _tsuchigumo_ out there, and there was no guarantee they would be as jocular as Kankuro had seemed. 

Or … he could take his chances with this _Gaara_ , and hope that having ‘taken a shine’ to Lee meant that he’d be willing to help him find a way home. 

Lee took a deep, steeling breath. 

Then he fell into the back of the line.

* * *

Kankuro led him to the dark aperture of a cave, its entrance hanging with stone stalactites. It looked like nothing so much as a mouth waiting to swallow Lee up. There were no further demon fires within, and the passage sloped downwards, deep into the earth. 

“Watch’er step,” Kankuro called, scuttling down into the cave’s maw. “There’s a bunch of uh … spare parts, down here.” 

As Kankuro crawled, he dragged one bony hand along the wall of the cave. Sparks lit up in his wake, lights flaring to life. Lee could see now that the cave was actually a stone stairway, its steps littered with rusted tools and wooden screws and broken doll parts. 

The moving dolls all halted at the head of the stairway, bobbling and clattering, almost hesitant to go any further. Lee came to a wary stop behind their teeming, whirring mass. 

“Hurry it up, ya buncha cowards!” Kankuro snapped. “Nobody’s getting scrapped for parts tonight.” His head turned a full half-circle to face Lee. “I swear, you’d think they’d be more brainless, being bewitched. They’re s’posed to do my bidding, but it’s like squeezing water out of a rock with these guys sometimes.” 

“You … bewitched them?” Lee asked, as the dolls finally acquiesced and began making their way down the steps behind Kankuro. Lee stepped over the cracked ceramic face and torn fabric of a _kimekomi_ doll. “You can do that?” 

Kankuro’s body language was very unlike that of a human, but he seemed to preen at that. 

“Yee-up, came up with the spell myself! Impressive, right? Kids break an’ throw away an awful lot of toys, and there’s nothing they love more than their dolls. So they’re _perfect_. It’s almost amazing nobody thought of it before me.” 

“... Love? Is that important?”

Behind Lee, the line of sparks fizzled one by one, casting the top of the staircase into darkness.

“You betcha,” Kankuro replied. “Some of the _kami_ , they get so focused on prayers and worship that they forget about it. But a little clapping and chanting is nothing compared to love. If you can get just one human to love you, then it doesn’t matter how crummy your shrine is. Love is the most powerful magic there is!” 

Kankuro dragged his nails against the wall of the final landing of the stone staircase with a screech of sparks. He waggled his painted eyebrows. “The strongest dolls are the ones the kid really cried over. The really heartbroken ones, y’know?” 

Lee frowned, but Kankuro didn’t appear to notice his discomfort, turning instead to the wide room they had just arrived at. It looked very much like the inside of a shrine in one of the big cities, with red lacquered crossbeams and tatami mat flooring and wood frame walls with white paper screens. But the ceiling above was the jagged stone of a cavern, lit not by oil lamps or paper lanterns, but by glowing, wispy balls of demon fire. In the place of paintings on the screens, the walls crawled with living plants, ivy and moss clustering on the thick trunks of trees with no branches, whose wood glowed from within with a strange green light. 

The room was teeming with creatures of all shapes and sizes, _tengu_ with red faces and long, sharp noses; spry little _kappa_ with their bald heads fringed with weeds; women who had great, leathery wings like a bat’s in the place of arms. The space was overwhelmingly loud with jabbering and chattering in languages Lee couldn’t begin to understand, warm with the smell of cooking food from a great iron pot that steamed and bubbled over the square fire pit in the room’s center. 

“Oh, right, you’ll need this.” Kankuro pulled something from under the flap of his hood and popped it in his mouth, chewing it a few times. Then he spat it back out and, before Lee could think to protest, jammed it deep into Lee’s ear. 

The thing writhed deep in Lee’s head. Lee gagged.

“ _Kodoku_ ,” Kankuro said. “Worm magic. Put a bunch of bugs in a jar until they kill each other and only the strongest one remains. This’ll help you understand.” He smiled that fang-toothed smile and moved his mouth.

In his empty ear, Lee heard only the gnashing of a spider’s teeth and a high-pitched clicking, but through the squishing noises of the wriggling insect, Lee understood Kankuro exactly: 

“Not everyone down here speaks Japanese.” 

Kankuro’s head turned back to the room, his long neck extending until he was close to the fire. “Yo, Gaara!” he shouted, his voice echoing around the cavern. 

The room went momentarily quiet, everyone pausing in their business to look in a single direction.

On the far side of the chamber, a young man with red hair raised his head. 

There was a sound like a bag of rice being emptied, and suddenly he was right in front of Lee.

“You made it,” he said. 

The young man—Gaara, Lee assumed—was slight and brown-skinned. There was a dark scar on his forehead. Lee had never been good at reading, but it looked like a _kanji_ , or a curse mark. Gaara wore an odd, short little kimono that ended just above his knees. It was wide open at the neck to expose thick bandages wrapped heavily around his left shoulder and upper chest, his arm supported by a cloth sling. He reached his hand out towards Lee, and Lee realized his fingers ended not in fingernails, but in sharp black claws. 

Most extraordinary of all, however, were his eyes. They were black all around, where they should have been white, and his irises were a brassy golden color. His dark pupils were not round, but instead formed warped crosses that shimmered when he blinked. 

His clawed hand stroked the side of Lee’s face. His fingers were cool and rough, like the pads of a dog’s paws. 

“I was worried you’d gotten lost.”

Lee swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” he said, chest feeling tight. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met before.” Lee could be a bit thick-headed, but he was certain he would remember if he had met someone who looked like _that_. Especially with such unnaturally colored hair. 

Gaara tilted his head. “I’ve known you for a very long time,” he said. “And you’ve known me for … about half a day, by your reckoning.”

Lee’s brow furrowed. He searched Gaara’s face, his curious dark eyes, his red hair, his injured arm …

“You’re … the tanuki?” 

Gaara bared his teeth. His teeth were wide-set and pointed, with long, round-tipped canines.

“I knew you were clever.”

Nobody had ever called Lee ‘clever’ before. Hard-working, sure. Hot-blooded, definitely. But never ‘clever’. 

There was that sound again, like sand being strewn on clean stone, and suddenly the small, furry creature sat at Lee’s feet. It opened its mouth and chittered. Then, just as quickly, its body stretched back out. Its hair faded to skin, and Gaara stood before him again. 

“But—but if you can shapeshift, why didn’t you—? If you’d just changed into a person, you could’ve broken out of that trap without a problem!”

“It’s easy for me to change down here, where the magic is rich and abundant,” Gaara said. He spoke Japanese flawlessly, the sound of his raspy voice exactly the same in Lee’s unblocked ear and the one with the worm magic in it. “Up there I need … external assistance. And it’s very difficult to focus on a transformation when your shoulder is shattered by a hunter’s trap.” 

“I’m sorry.” Lee frowned. “Does it—does it still hurt? I’m glad you got it bandaged up. I felt so horrible that I lost you.” 

Gaara thinned his lips. 

Kankuro cackled. Lee started; he had almost forgotten the giant spider was there, so deeply had he been preoccupied with Gaara.

“Lady Chiyo wouldn’t heal him,” Kankuro said. “Said it served him right for going up to spy on the humans all the time.”

“Oh,” Lee said. “Is there anything I can do? I’m not a doctor, but I know a little bit about bandages and herbs and things.”

Gaara reached up and plucked a twig from Lee’s bangs, discarding it to the floor. “I’ll fix it myself later,” he said. “Once I’ve had a little more time to restore my energy. But you—” He wiped a bit of dirt from Lee’s cheek. “—have been traveling for a very long time. Has anyone ever told you you’re remarkably stubborn?”

Lee’s cheeks heated. “Gai-sensei says I’m hard-headed, but that I make up for it with burning hot passion and single-minded determination!” He clenched his fist in front of his chest in illustration.

Gaara hummed. “You know, most humans, when they get lost, they take the path of least resistance. Wherever the land slopes down, that’s the direction they’ll walk. But you … no matter how much I moved the earth, you just kept trying to climb back up.” 

“You … moved the earth to try to get me here? Was it you who lit the lanterns, too?”

Gaara’s eyes widened minutely. 

“Oh yeah,” Kankuro chimed in. “Didn’t have the time to mention it. Guy was walking down a whole path of _oni-bi_.”

“Hm,” Gaara said. “The _oni-bi_ light the paths of those from our world who have gotten lost in the world above. Interesting that they would have lit your way.” Gaara’s lip curled, the hint of one long canine in the corner of his lip. “Maybe this will work out after all.” 

He turned to Kankuro. “Take him to my rooms, please. He needs a bath and some hot food. And—” Gaara’s eyes trailed from the shredded hems of Lee’s pleated _naga-bakama_ pants up to the stained collar of his kimono. “—some clean clothes. Men’s clothes. There was a merchant boy who drowned in the river a few years back, just about his size.” 

Lee pursed his lips. Nobody had drowned in the village’s river in decades. 

Just then, a brass bell chimed overhead. Gaara cast his eyes up. 

“Father’s calling,” he said. His expressions were very subtle, and his features so strange that Lee had trouble discerning his emotions, but he thought Gaara sounded almost … disappointed. “I have to go.”

The bell rang again, more insistently this time.

“Just one last thing.” Gaara grabbed Lee’s hands. His sharp nails dug into Lee’s palms. “Tell me your name.”

Lee’s throat worked. He’d heard about this, how _kami_ operated on wit and guile. How they could steal your name and your free will along with it, keeping you in their thrall until they tired of you. 

But Lee had never been much for trickery and deception. So he faced the question the way he did all problems: head on and unflinching.

Lee’s second mistake was giving away his name. 

He told Gaara his name. The one that Gai-sensei and Neji and Tenten and all the villagers called him by. The name his parents gave him. 

Gaara cocked his head. “Clever,” he said again, his eyes slitted in something like satisfaction. “But I’ll take it, if you don’t want it anymore.”

He clenched his fingers and blood sprang to the surface of Lee’s palms. Lee winced, unable to stop a little cry from escaping his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Gaara said. The bell rang a third time. “I really have to leave.” 

There was a sound like stone cracking, and he was gone. 

Lee wiped his bloody palms on his pants. Might as well, he thought, since it seemed he wouldn’t be keeping them.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Haori](https://i.imgur.com/YIYNql8.jpg) are jackets popular in the _Taisho_ period (about 1912-1926) that are worn over kimono and long, pleated pants called _hakama_. 
> 
> [Traditional Ainu traps](https://i.imgur.com/4cNlSsP.png) are normally secured to trees. When they snap closed, they break the leg of the animal who stepped in them. 
> 
> [Obi](https://i.imgur.com/uV9enLq.jpg) are the sashes tied around the waist of kimono. 
> 
> [Woven straw boots](https://i.imgur.com/zC2weI6.jpg) were traditionally worn by peasants and people who lived outside of cities, especially in the colder months. 
> 
> [Oni-bi](https://i.imgur.com/zqORI1R.jpg) are mysterious fires typically seen in graveyards, similar to the western Will-o'-the-Wisp. 
> 
> [Biwa](https://i.imgur.com/wWGxEj5.jpg) are five-stringed instruments that somewhat resemble lutes. 
> 
> [Tsuchigumo](https://i.imgur.com/LabCTDK.jpg) are giant spider _yokai_ (monsters) that live underground and eat people. 
> 
> [Bunraku puppets and puppeteers](https://i.imgur.com/MxNLjXt.jpg) are also the inspiration for Kankuro's canon appearance. 
> 
> [Kokeshi,](https://i.imgur.com/yqTwJ2Y.jpg) [Daruma](https://i.imgur.com/eb3c2Tb.jpg), [Karakuri puppets](https://i.imgur.com/0ENWOgy.jpg), and [Kimekomi](https://i.imgur.com/ihiM5gt.jpg) are all traditional Japanese dolls. 
> 
> [Tengu](https://i.imgur.com/IKhknns.jpg) are _yokai_ with long noses and wings, famous for _kamekakushi_ , or spiriting people away. 
> 
> [Kappa](https://i.imgur.com/Msvq4dm.jpg) are amphibious _yokai_ that carry water in an indentation in their shaved heads. 
> 
> [Naga-bakama](https://i.imgur.com/3t0iEa6.jpg) (lit. "long _hakama_ ") are long, red pleated pants worn by Shinto shrine maidens.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Please look at this amazing art of Chapter 1](https://sgtjo.tumblr.com/post/625482069142798336/lees-first-mistake-was-walking-past-the-shrine) by [@sgtjo](https://sgtjo.tumblr.com)!
> 
>  **Warnings** this chapter for: mentions of unsafe chest-binding, further discussion of cannibalism, minor injuries, and rationing of food.

“You’re lucky Gaara’s sticking his neck out for you,” Kankuro called as he clambered down another sloping hallway. “Otherwise we’d be puttin’ ya to work.” 

Lee scrambled to keep up with him and his procession of clattering dolls. The passageway narrowed here, and the rock was fading from the cloudy grey of the rocks in the forest to a pale tan. The stone was porous and warm.

“I can work!” Lee protested. “If you need the help. I might not look like much, but I’m pretty strong!” 

Kankuro barked a laugh. “Don’t let Temari hear you say that.” 

His long neck stretched to nod at the open door of a room they passed. Within sat a woman with uncombed white-blonde hair, jostling a baby boy on her knee. Her fingernails were sharp as boning knives. She didn’t seem to notice them passing, but Lee covered his mouth to subdue his gasp at the nearness of her talons to the little boy’s tender throat. _Yama-uba_ —mountain witches—were said to nurse children only until they were fat enough to kill and eat. Would they really just let that woman slaughter and devour that child and not say a word?

“Why not?” Lee hissed when they were out of earshot.

“Temari likes to play with humans. See that guy?” Kankuro stage-whispered, gesturing with one of his hands over his shoulder. The man had cloven hooves in the place of his feet, and blue-white antlers sprouting from his head so widely that Lee had to duck to avoid being gored by them. He nodded to Kankuro in greeting as they passed, then gave Lee a curious look. There were dappled white marks all along the edge of his hairline and jaw, like the spots of a deer. “Shikamaru used to be human, too, before that witch got to him.” 

Lee’s eyes went wide. 

Ahead, a door creaked open, and Kankuro’s many hands ushered him inside. 

The room was wide and very warm from a fire burning in the hearth. Unlike the other places Lee had seen, it was lit not by ghost fire or magical sparks, but by hanging oil lamps and the melted tallow-ends of old candles. The room was the most cluttered space Lee had ever been in. Every surface was bedecked with the detritus of human life, all in the most unusual positions. A cart’s wheel hung from the wall like a mandala; the snapped woodblock soles of _geta_ sandals were stacked like a child’s building blocks; single, unmatched chopsticks were arrayed like an _ikebana_ arrangement in the cracked half of an empty _sake_ gourd. 

“Yeah,” Kankuro drawled. “The kid’s an obsessive.” He sighed. “Well, let’s see if we can’t getcha lookin’ more princely.” 

He stalked over to a haphazard pile of fabric and began digging through it in a whirlwind of motion. 

“Dunno how he expected _me_ to find this stuff,” he muttered under his breath. “How’m I s’posed to know what human boys wear?” 

Squashed flat caps and badly stained _yukata_ in a rainbow of colors went flying every which way. Kankuro held up one garment, then another, and another, squinting all the while at Lee.

“Pretty sure he has a couple of old washbasins over by the fire so you can heat some bathwater,” Kankuro raised his voice, still digging through the massive pile of cast-off clothing. 

Lee found the water (in a dented old trough that Lee was pretty sure had once been used to feed livestock) and the dipper (a mossy old rice scoop) quickly enough, and set about preparing a basin of hot water. At least what Kankuro had called washbasins _were_ actually washing tubs, though most of them were badly rusted. They were stacked in a precarious pile half again as tall as Lee, so that he had to overturn and climb atop a splintering _usu_ mortar to reach the top one. 

“A- _ha_!” Kankuro cackled. His arms stretched the length of the room to hold out a fistful of dingy white fabric. “This should do it, right?” He shook them out with a flourish. “Pretty sure this is the one that came off the merchant boy, at least.” 

In one hand, he was holding a _kosode_ in a style at least a century out of date, and in another he held an old Shinto priest’s robes. But at least they seemed clean enough, and they would probably fit Lee.

“Um, yes!” Lee smiled and bowed, taking the garments gratefully. “These should be perfect. Thank you very much for your hospitality.” 

He and Kankuro stared at each other for a silent beat.

“If you wouldn’t mind—” Lee nodded to the warm bathwater. “Uh, I’m going to … I’m going to bathe now?”

“‘Kay,” Kankuro said, nonplussed.

“That means I need to … get … undressed.” Lee felt the heat climbing the back of his neck. 

Kankuro’s eyes narrowed, then widened. “Ohhh,” he said slowly, “you want some privacy, man?”

“If that’s all right.” 

“Yeah, yeah, no problem.” He started walking backwards towards the door, scattering pieces of fish skeletons and feathery lures in his wake. “Sorry.” 

“That’s okay.”

“I’ll go getcha somethin’ to eat.” One of his hands rubbed the back of his neck while the other groped for the door handle. 

“Thank you very much!” Lee called. 

“Weird,” Kankuro muttered to himself before the door shut behind him. “Humans, modest. Who’da thought?” 

And then Lee was suddenly alone, for the first time since he’d entered this strange world. 

He looked around the room for a weapon. There were surprisingly many, all in a state of terrible disrepair. Still, Lee palmed a small paring knife and slipped it between the weaving of his one remaining boot. 

Kankuro was jovial enough, and Gaara seemed … at least _interested_ in him, even if Lee couldn’t tell if the tanuki actually _liked_ him. But he didn’t know if he could trust either of them. 

Lee began to peel his filthy clothes from his body, folding them neatly beside the fire. He winced as he unwound the wrappings from his tender ribcage. He had left them on too long again. All day and most of the night, and running and climbing with them too. He rubbed at a forming bruise and said a quick prayer of thanks that his skin was unbroken and his breathing regular. 

Tanuki were supposed to be mischievous, wrathful little creatures. Lee recalled a story Gai-sensei told him once, about a tanuki about to be cooked for a farmer’s dinner, who sweet-talked the farmer’s wife into letting him out of the cage only to push her into the cooking pot herself and serve the stew made from her body to the farmer in revenge. 

Lee couldn’t help but feel as if he was preparing himself to be eaten as he dumped hot water over his head. He couldn’t find any soap, though he had no doubt that if he looked hard enough he could find some. Probably in among the rusty cooking implements or propping up some torn scrolls. But the hot water and a spare scrap of mostly-clean cloth Lee pulled from the massive fabric pile did most of the trick. The scabbing wounds on the palms of his hands stung from the work as he wrung the water from the ends of his hair and plaited it back to a semblance of normalcy. 

There were a series of noblewomen’s fine, sharp sewing needles hanging on fishing line from the ceiling, like paper fortunes dangling from a shrine’s trees. Lee snapped the string of one and tucked it into the tie of his braid. Better to be overprepared than under-armed. 

He had just finished tying the wraps of the _kariginu_ robes when several hands knocked at the door.

“Grub time!” Kankuro called, opening the door with one hand while another clasped over his eyes. A third and fourth hand carried a tray piled high with a steaming bowl of stew, a domed serving of rice, and several more bowls and cups Lee couldn’t see the contents of.

“Can I look yet? I don’t hear any screaming, so … ” 

Lee nodded, and then, realizing Kankuro couldn’t see him, said, “Yes!” 

Kankuro dropped his hand from his face. He looked Lee up and down, his expression obscure behind the paint on his face.

“Hey! Ya clean up pretty nice, huh? Maybe Gaara isn’t so wrong all the time, after all.” 

“Thank … you?” Lee said awkwardly.

Kankuro failed to notice his unease. “Don’t mention it.” He plunked the tray down heavily on a bowing table that Lee was pretty sure was actually the stolen top of a _torii_ gate. 

A handful of the _kokeshi_ dolls wobbled between Kankuro’s legs and gently butted Lee’s ankles, clattering.

“Give the guy some space, will ya?” Kankuro shooed them back. “Look at that, you’re already makin’ friends.” 

“Are they … hungry? I can share with them!” 

Kankuro cackled. “That’s what they’d like you to think. No, they’re just attention hogs. Ignore ‘em and they’ll leave ya alone.” 

Lee bowed to them. “I’m sorry, I have to eat right now. Maybe I can visit with you later?” 

Seemingly placated, the dolls hopped and bobbled away. 

Steam rose from the tray of food. Lee inhaled deeply, mouth watering. It all smelled so delicious. 

“Thank you very much for the food.” Lee bowed. He picked up the little spoon—a proper ceramic one, not one of the mottled, discarded objects that were strewn about Gaara’s room—and froze with it in his hand. 

He remembered the story of the goddess Izanami, who traveled to the nether world in death and ate their food, such that her husband Izanagi, when he came to retrieve her, could not pull her back to the upper world where they lived. 

Lee didn’t know if it would be the same for humans. And he was so terribly, terribly hungry. But he couldn’t risk not being able to see his home again.

He sat there with his mouth agape, working to form words. 

“Oh, uh,” Kankuro said awkwardly. “Is this, like, another human thing? Gotta eat in private?”

“Yes!” Lee lied eagerly. “I am so sorry. It’s a human thing.” 

“No worries.” Kankuro began to back out of the room again. “Gaara should be back … soon-ish. Whenever he’s done with whatever our dad put him up to. In the meantime, make yourself at home. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Pretty familiar? Lotta human stuff in here. Should be pretty homey.” 

Lee had no way of properly articulating how completely alien this whole space was to any notion of ‘home’, but he bowed again, thanking Kankuro profusely.

“Oh,” Kankuro said from the doorway. His arm stretched, bending with an excess of joints, to the pile of Lee’s cast off clothing. “Do you want me to take that trash from you? If you leave it here, Gaara’ll probably add it to the hoard.” 

Lee practically dove for his clothing. He couldn’t say why, but he had a notion that keeping his clothes was as integral to his ability to return home as refraining from eating the food. And, of course, his boot still contained the secreted knife.

“Please don’t!” he shouted. “I … want to keep them. For, um. Sentimental reasons.”

Kankuro snorted, shaking his head. His arm retreated back to the closeness of his body, unlatching the door. 

“Maybe the kid is more like a human than I thought,” he muttered to himself. 

Then he opened the door and shuttered it behind him. Lee heard his many footsteps retreating down the hall, pursued by the clanks and rattles of his army of dolls.

Working quickly, Lee searched the room for a place to hide the food. He had no idea when Gaara would be back—’soon-ish’ was beyond vague—and he had no intention of offending his host by refusing his hospitality. The room was a mess, so there was no dearth of empty containers, but Lee had no way of knowing which of these things Gaara purposed for daily use and which were merely ornamental, or mostly ignored. 

Finally, Lee found a corner of the room that was dustier than the others. In it was a lacquered wooden chest—the remnants of a samurai’s wife’s bridal trousseau—with its hinges broken, missing its lid. Lee hastily scraped the food into the box. It still smelled strongly, so Lee looked around for something to cover it. He pulled a thick portion of batting and straw from a cloud-like pile that may have once been the stuffing of bedrolls, and packed it tightly over the spilled food. 

He sniffed the air. Good. The room smelled heavily of dust and oil smoke, and with the food dirtied and ruined, Lee had purged himself of the desire to eat it.

His stomach rumbled. Unfortunately, that meant he was still very hungry. 

That was Lee’s third mistake. 

He glanced at the door. He could try to make a break for it now, he supposed, while he was still unguarded, but he had no way of knowing if he might encounter Gaara or one of the other creatures coming up the hall, or if anyone else he ran into might be as friendly as Kankuro had been. He thought of the witch Temari with her taloned claws, sucking the blood from a baby’s neck, and he shuddered.

Lee was very driven, sometimes to the point of foolhardiness, but he wasn’t a complete dunce. 

Besides, he was so deeply underground that he had no idea which direction _home_ even was anymore. 

And he was so _tired_. The bath had been nice, but he was still practically starving and nearly dead on his feet. It was hard to think clearly. He just needed to make a plan, and then see it through. That’s what Neji would have done. 

Tears sprung to Lee’s eyes. _Neji_. What fate would he think had befallen Lee? Would he blame himself, for having let Lee run off into the woods alone?

Lee shook his head, chuckling wetly. Probably not. Neji would rightly place the blame on Lee for his own rash decisions. 

Still, Lee missed him already. And Tenten and Gai-sensei, too. 

He sat down heavily by the fire and pulled his soiled clothes into his lap. He rubbed the sleeve of his _haori_ jacket between his fingers. Even mottled with dust and frayed at the hem, it was still lovely. It was patterned in leaf greens and woven with black and orange thread. Gai-sensei had bought it for him years ago, when he traveled to one of the big cities to visit a friend. Neji and Tenten had matching ones in blue and pink. It was well-made, probably the finest and most expensive thing Lee owned. He felt horrible for having damaged it in his clumsiness. 

He crumpled his fist. Inside the fabric, something rattled.

Lee let go.

The chestnuts!

Lee dug through his pocket and pulled them out in a triumphantly clenched fist. There weren’t many, but if Lee could just eat a few of them to keep up his strength, then he was sure to be able to plan a way to escape. 

He cast his eyes around the room until he found something that might have been a fire poker or might have been a boat’s broken oar. He tied the spoon from his dinner to the handle and held it over the fireplace with a few of the chestnuts inside. Better to keep some, he thought, in case he had to stay an extra day or two. 

With one eye on the door and one eye on the fire, he roasted the nuts until their skins burst. The smell of their cooked flesh made his mouth water, and he crammed them into his mouth without bothering to properly peel them, chewing them so quickly his tongue burned. 

His stomach grumbled its thanks and begged for more. 

Lee ignored it. He was still hungry, but at least he wouldn’t starve. 

Now all there was left to do was wait. Hopefully Gaara would come soon, and then Lee could convince him to take him above ground, and from there … well. He’d figure it out.

* * *

‘Soon-ish’ ended up being a very long time. 

There were no windows in the room, so Lee hadn’t a clue how much time passed with him sitting by the fire, whether night had turned to day again. Kankuro didn’t come back, and nobody else came to the room either. Even the hall outside, when Lee peeked his head out to check, was as still and silent as a tomb. 

There was a lot to look at in the crowded room, to be sure, but there was only so much time that a person could pass staring at mouldering old junk before they grew bored of it. And the heat and smoke from the fire were making Lee even more drowsy. 

Although the room was clearly designed to be sleeping chambers, there was no futon or bedroll that Lee could see, just a pile of threadbare cushions with their stuffing hanging halfway out. Some of them were very ornately decorated, beaded and embroidered with plants and animals, and others were little more than peasants’ straw-stuffed sacks. It looked more like a den or a nest than a bed.

Well, Kankuro had said to make himself at home, right? 

Lee climbed into the heap and laid down. 

There were no blankets nearby, so he grabbed a few of the less-shredded kimono and _kosode_ from the pile by the door and wrapped himself up. 

Eventually, he slept.

* * *

Lee dreamed of drums and bells. People stomping and banging and calling out a name he didn’t recognize.

“Come home,” the voices said with their torches carried high. “Come home!”

Lee didn’t know who they were calling for, so instead he ran.

* * *

He awoke to black-gold eyes centimeters from his face.

He shrieked, startling backwards, and found himself half-buried in the cushions. 

“You’re awake,” Gaara said, as Lee extricated himself from the pile. “You were sleeping so deeply, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“How long have you been watching me?”

Gaara’s expression was guarded. “A while.” 

“How long is ‘a while’?” 

Gaara ignored the question. “Kankuro said you didn’t want to eat, but when I came in, the bowls were empty.”

“No,” Lee protested. “The food was … delicious! I ate it all.” 

“Where did you hide it?”

Lee grimaced and, standing, led Gaara to the chest in the corner where he had dumped the food.

Lee scratched his neck guiltily. “How did he know?” 

“Kankuro has a very keen sense of smell,” Gaara explained, holding up the damp, tea-stained cotton with some distaste. “And he’s an excellent liar. You, however, are terrible at it.”

“Oh.” The heat rose to Lee’s face. He ducked his head, buffing his bare foot against the stone floor.

“You don’t need to do this,” Gaara said, setting the ruined stuffing aside on the remains of a folding paper screen, crumpling the mess and pushing it away. “If you don’t like the food, all you need to do is ask for something else and I’ll have it brought to you. Anything you want at all.”

“Um,” Lee rubbed the back of his burning neck again. “That’s very kind of you, but I can’t … eat the food down here.” 

“Why not?” 

“If I eat it, I might not be able to go home again.”

“Home,” Gaara repeated. He exhaled heavily through his nose. He stood, and Lee realized for the first time that for all the intimidation of his presence, he was much shorter than Lee was. “I won’t force you. If you change your mind, let me know.” 

“Thank you,” Lee said. Then, noticing the lack of bandages around Gaara’s shoulder, he exclaimed, “Oh! Your shoulder. It’s better! Were you able to heal yourself up?”

“Mostly.” Gaara rubbed at his shoulder and rolled it. “It still aches a bit. I’m no Lady Chiyo. Though she said she might deign to put the finishing touches on me later, since she heard I managed to bring a human down here.” 

“You told people about me? Kankuro said you didn’t mention my eyebrows, so I thought—”

“I didn’t _have_ to tell people about you.” One of Gaara’s canines bared as he raised his upper lip. “A human walked right through the palace’s main room. I couldn’t have kept you a secret if I wanted to.” 

“Oh.” Lee’s face fell, disappointed, though he couldn’t have articulated why. “Wait … this is a palace? Does that mean you’re, um … royalty?” 

Gaara hummed. “Of a sort.” 

“Kankuro said something about looking princely. And then … your dad … does that mean your dad’s the king?” 

“It’s not quite that simple.” Gaara turned away from Lee and began tinkering with something he couldn’t see. “The ruler of this place is the Lady Kaguya.” 

“Kaguya? Like in the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter?” Lee thought back to the trees in the main room, with their glowing trunks. It was said the Moon Princess, Kaguya, had been cut from a glowing stick of bamboo by a poor bamboo cutter and his wife, and that her keeping was paid for by mysterious sachets of gold that appeared in the cut stalks thereafter. Until, as an adult, she sickened and was forced to return to her homeland. “The one from the _moon?_ ”

“Humans make up all sorts of stories.” Gaara’s nostrils flared when he snorted, the bridge of his nose wrinkling. “But my father holds … considerable power. And I suppose in your terms, that you then might consider me something like a prince.”

“Oh, um, does that mean … should I call you Your Highness?” Lee bowed quickly, until his nose was almost touching the floor. “I’m very sorry for my rudeness! And for ruining your chest! And for um. For sleeping in your … in your bed.” 

Gaara made a sound not dissimilar to a snicker. “You can just call me Gaara.” His black-clawed hand seized on Lee’s shoulder and tugged him upright. His touch was surprisingly gentle. “As for the rest, don’t trouble yourself over it. I would have had a room made up for you, but I thought here might be more comfortable for you. More familiar.” Gaara stroked the line of Lee’s jaw. His fingertips kept that same cool, rough texture. 

“I see Kankuro found you the merchant boy’s clothes. And …” Gaara looked the priest’s robes up and down. “Well.” He sighed. “He doesn’t spend much time above-ground. I can’t expect perfection. Are they comfortable, at least? I could get you something different, if you prefer. It wouldn’t take me long.” 

Lee looked around the room, at Gaara’s hoard of seeming trash, clearly treasured. “When you say ‘get me something’ … do you mean go up to the human world and steal it?” 

Gaara didn’t say anything for a moment, just studying Lee’s face. After a beat, he dropped his hand and looked away, towards the detritus scattered on the floor. 

“Humans are forgetful,” he said slowly. “They discard things without even thinking about it. Lose them and don’t go looking for them.” He looked back at Lee’s eyes. In the light of the low-burning candles, his oddly shaped pupils appeared to flicker. “I never take anything that would be noticed missing. Or, well …” He looked askance. “... _Usually_.”

Lee pursed his lips. “That’s still _stealing_.”

Gaara opened his mouth to respond, but Lee held up a hand to silence him.

“No. You don’t need to steal anything for me.” He tugged at the billowy sleeves of the _kariginu_. “This is fine. It fits, it’s clean. That’s all I need.” 

Gaara scoffed. “You’re too polite for your own good.” Lee actually thought he had been rather _rude_ just now, but he didn’t say anything as Gaara continued, “You don’t need to be, down here. You can have anything you want just by asking for it. Just say the word and it’s yours.” 

“I don’t need anything special!” Lee’s face was flushed with heat and no small amount of bewilderment. “ _I’m_ not special. Why are you treating me like I am?” 

Gaara reached for the side of his face again, his sharp nails just at the shell of Lee’s ear, almost a threat. It was like a strange dance. Touching Lee, then not touching Lee. Looking at him, looking away. 

“Oh, but you _are_.” 

Lee turned his face away. 

Gaara’s mouth dropped open. Inside, Lee could see the sharp points of his wide-set teeth, the odd, rough-textured pink of his tongue. 

“You’re not being modest,” Gaara said after a long moment punctuated only by the crackle of the fire. “You really don’t see it.”

“See what?” 

The bells started ringing overhead again, somehow as clear and crisp down here in Gaara’s room as they had been in the main hall. 

Gaara looked up and sighed. 

“You have to leave again?” Lee asked. “So soon?” 

“My father …” Gaara didn’t finish the sentence. The bells rang again, harsher. 

“When will you be back?” 

Gaara opened his mouth. The bells tolled a final time. 

There was that sound like spilled rice again, and then he was gone.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Yama-uba](https://i.imgur.com/ll6PjdP.jpg) are _yokai_ that take the form of mountain witches who have a penchant for cannibalism ... and child-rearing. 
> 
> [Geta](https://i.imgur.com/vX9o3dR.jpg) are traditional Japanese sandals with raised woodblock soles.
> 
> [Ikebana](https://i.imgur.com/nRc45xu.jpg) is the Japanese art of flower arrangement.
> 
> [Sake gourds](https://i.imgur.com/v4vRpli.jpg) have a distinctive (and familiar!) shape. Gaara's small gourd in late Shippuden/Boruto is probably a reference to this, because tanuki are traditionally depicted as drunkards.
> 
> [Yukata](https://i.imgur.com/OxRfK2l.jpg) (left and front center) are lightweight summer kimono.
> 
> [Usu](https://i.imgur.com/rtxhpgs.jpg) are wood or stone mortars used to pound mochi. 
> 
> [Kosode](https://i.imgur.com/8I8A6eW.jpg) (lit. "small sleeve") are the precursor to the kimono. They were last in fashion as outerwear around the 19th century, though they're still sometimes worn as undergarments. 
> 
> [Kariginu](https://i.imgur.com/PBl7jJj.gif) (lit. "hunting garment") are robes that were worn as outerwear by Japanese nobles in the Edo period. Today, pretty much the only people you would see wearing them are priests, who wear an all white _kariginu_ called a _jōe_.
> 
> [Torii](https://i.imgur.com/c22SqEC.jpg) gates mark the entrance to Shinto shrines.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** this chapter: a character is accidentally stuck with a needle, a small amount of blood is described (and licked up), rationing of food continues, mention of pregnancy/contraception, a character is weak from starvation, and cannibalism continues to be mentioned.

Lee spent more time alone than in anyone’s company. Gaara came and went as he pleased, vanishing sometimes for days at a time and returning at the oddest hours—insofar as Lee could even tell the time down here, with the sun nowhere in sight. 

And despite Lee’s protests, Gaara sometimes returned to him with gifts. 

The first was a wooden hand comb, delicately carved and painted, missing just one fine tooth.

“Did you steal this?” Lee asked hotly.

Gaara ignored him, playing with the tail of Lee’s braid. “Can I comb your hair?”

Lee was too startled by the question to reply with anything but, “Okay.” 

He knelt down on a cushion near the fire with Gaara behind him. It was always overwarm in Gaara’s room, to the point that Lee had started wearing just the merchant boy’s light _kosode_ in between meals, when he thought he would be alone. 

Gaara had appeared in the doorway once while he was wearing it, after Lee had taken off the priest’s heavy robes and hung them on the frame of a bicycle that was missing all its gears. 

Lee had scrambled for the _kariginu_ , blushing, but Gaara had just stared at him in that strange, unreadable way of his. 

“It’s hot in here!” Lee had protested, face florid, holding the bundle of white fabric in front of his chest like some sort of scandalized maiden. 

Gaara hadn’t said a word, but the next day the fire had been lower. 

It was still too hot, though, especially close to the fireplace where the light was best. Lee was hyper-conscious of the bead of sweat dripping down the back of his neck as Gaara untied the fasten on his plait.

Gaara hissed and drew back. 

When Lee turned to see what was the matter, there was blood on Gaara’s fingertip. He held up the noblewoman’s needle. Its point glinted in the firelight. 

“Did you forget this?” 

Lee took it from him, shamefaced, and tucked it into the pocket in his sleeve. 

“No harm will come to you here.” Gaara said, studying the drop of blood on the pad of his finger. As Lee watched, it swelled and then dripped, down past Gaara’s knuckle to the palm of his hand. He licked it off with his rough tongue. “You’re under my protection.” 

Lee shuddered. He had been in this strange place so long that he had almost forgotten to be afraid. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Gaara looked up at him, licking blood off his sharp canines. 

“If you want a weapon, you can have one. I wouldn’t take it from you.” 

Lee’s eyebrows furrowed. “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of what?”

“That I’d hurt you. To get out of here.”

Gaara’s face was that blank, impassive mask again, his eyes searching Lee’s face for … something. 

“You saved me when you thought I was just an animal.” Gaara touched Lee’s hand, where two pink divots in the meat of his palm marked the place Gaara’s teeth had gouged him. “Even after I’d bitten you, you still worried for my life. There’s not a bone of cruelty in you. What is there to be scared of?” 

Lee looked down at Gaara’s hand, the sharp points of his fingers so delicate on his palm, then back up to his face.

“And if I tried to escape?”

“Escape?” Gaara frowned just slightly, the points of his teeth leaving little dents on his lower lip when he jutted it out in a near-pout. “You can leave any time you want.” 

Lee’s heart stammered in his chest. “But I—I don’t know the way back home.” 

Gaara reached up and brushed Lee’s loose-hanging hair away from his face. “As soon as you truly want it, the way _home_ will be clear to you.” He twined a lock of Lee’s hair around one black claw. “Can I finish?” 

Lee turned and, as Gaara gently combed his hair, racked his brain for any inkling of a path back to the human world. 

His mind came up empty, but that might have been because the even pressure of Gaara’s hand was very soothing and quite distracting, even if Lee suspected that partway through he had traded out the comb for his own fingers.

* * *

The next day Gaara disappeared without the bells to herald him, and when he returned he pressed a short, flat-bladed knife into Lee’s hand. 

Lee couldn’t read the inscription on the carved bone handle, but he would have recognized the shape of it anywhere.

“This is Neji’s knife!” he exclaimed. “How did you—?” 

“This one was the closest to the one you lost,” Gaara said placidly. “The one in your boot is dull. It will be less than useless if you try to use it to defend yourself.”

“You went through my things?” Lee said hotly.

“I didn’t have to. You’re a terrible liar.” Gaara looked up at Lee from under his prominent browbone. “You don’t like it? I can get you another one.”

“But—!” Lee stared down at the knife in his hand. Neji was going to be in terrible trouble with his uncle if he thought his expensive gift had been treated carelessly. “Did you take it from him? We have to give it back.”

“I didn’t steal it.” Gaara’s fingers were still pressed over Lee’s on the knife’s handle. “The boy lost this in the underbrush. By the chestnut trees.”

“ _Neji!_ ” Lee insisted. “Does that mean you know where he is?” 

Gaara tilted his head to the right. “I don’t know their names,” he said, “the humans. Unless they give them to me.”

“Neji’s my friend. We lived together with Gai-sensei and Tenten. He has hair down to his chin and—” Lee froze. He couldn’t remember his friend’s face. No matter how he tried, it seemed to slip right out of his memory when he tried to grab it, like water between the fingers of a cupped hand. His mouth worked frantically, searching for the words. 

“The boy with the cold eyes,” Gaara said after a moment. 

That felt right. 

“Yes!” Lee pounded his fist into his palm. “So you _do_ know where he is! Can you take me to him?” 

Gaara shook his head once, just a slow, minute rotation. “No,” he said. “You can only find your own way back.” 

Tears sprang up at the corners of Lee’s eyes. He dug his fingers hard into the hilt of the knife. He had known Neji his whole life. How could he have forgotten his face?

“I—” Lee gasped a sob. “I don’t know _how_.” 

Gaara’s cool, rough palm cupped his cheek. His thumb caught Lee’s tears and brushed them aside. “If you want it, you can find it,” he said. “You just have to think about the things you left behind.” 

But Lee _did_ want to go home. He was sure he did. At least … he _thought_ he did. And the things he’d left behind … his teacher, his friends … they faded further and further from him the harder he tried to grasp at them, like ghosts fading into the mist. 

“Do you want to keep that?” Gaara gestured to the knife.

“Yes,” Lee hiccuped wetly. 

He rubbed his thumb along the unfamiliar _kanji_ of Neji’s family name, and studied them even as they evaded his understanding.

* * *

Often Lee awoke to find Gaara sitting on the edge of the pillows where he slept. Gaara himself never seemed to sleep, though he was sometimes resting when Lee got up, his gold eyes hazy and half-open, his body propped up against Lee’s shoulder or the wall. 

“Where do you sleep?” Lee asked him one morning—or what he assumed was the morning—stretching and yawning as he climbed out of the heap of cushions and cast-off clothes. 

“I only sleep in the winter,” Gaara said shortly. “What are you doing?”

Lee turned from fluffing the pillows with a half-folded kimono in his hands. “Making up the bed.” 

“Why?”

“I …” Lee paused. At home they folded the futons away in the morning so there was space on the tatami mats for the day’s activities. But Gaara’s cluttered room had plenty of space, and however neatly he stacked the pillows, they never took up any less of the floor. “It … makes me feel more normal, I guess. It reminds me of home.”

“Home,” Gaara echoed. His eyes went sharp, the way they always did at the mention of that word. Not angry, just … intense. “You’re welcome to keep using those pillows, or I can have something more … human brought down.”

“I already told you not to steal anything for me.” 

Gaara let the argument drop, and Lee kept sleeping in the nest of loose bedding, sometimes waking with Gaara’s clawed fingers twined in the ends of his hair.

He stopped dreaming of the drums. The bells and clapping and raised voices faded to just a single voice, calling a name he didn’t recognize.

Eventually, that voice faded, too.

Kankuro came a few times a day with food. He brought different dishes each time, sometimes familiar staples and sometimes things Lee had never seen or heard of before, a constant and dizzying array of sustenance, as if someone (Lee suspected who) was trying to find the temptation which would finally make Lee relent. Lee refused it all, and Kankuro respectfully whisked it away as soon as Lee declined, though often not without commenting on the smell or taste. As if Lee couldn’t smell it. As if his mouth didn’t water.

When it got to be too much to bear, he heated a few more chestnuts in the fire and scarfed them down. But his supply was beginning to dwindle. 

There wasn’t much to keep him occupied in the long stretches between when Gaara left and came back. Kankuro was kind enough, and his dolls were very sweet, but he was … different. Less human than Gaara seemed, and easily confused by the things Lee said. And he acted busy all the time, bustling in and out of the room with his trays of food in one hand and a dozen different tools in the others, always muttering to himself and tinkering. 

So Lee set himself the task of cleaning up. There was certainly plenty of that to be done. 

He heated a tub of water over the fireplace for washing, thinking to start with his own filthy clothes. But once he had those hanging to dry, he turned his attention to the cast-off garments in their haphazard pile, shaking the dust from them and working the stains—some of which were obviously food, and some of which he preferred not to think about—with a flat end of soap and some elbow grease. 

Once it was all dry, he pulled the noblewoman’s needle from his sleeve. He found a tangle of fine embroidery thread in a rainbow of colors, twisted like a spider’s web over the frame of an old folding screen. Lee’s stitches were wide and clumsy, no deft hand with a needle like Tenten was, but he could at least darn clothes. 

He stitched up his own jacket first and, while it would never look quite like it had when it was new, he considered his handiwork suitable enough to at least restore it to wearability. 

Gaara looked at him curiously when he came back a few days later to find Lee wearing his own jacket, beating the dust out of a tatami mat with the sole of an old shoe. 

“You did all this?” He gestured around the room to the evidence of Lee’s work, the orderly stacks of items neatly arranged along the walls, shining and clean. 

“Well.” Lee rubbed the back of his neck, studying the freshly-swept floor. “I just thought it made more sense. All the cooking things are together now.”

“Cooking … things,” Gaara repeated. 

Lee showed him the tidy stack of crockery, the neat bundles of chopsticks he had tied with twine, the little rows of rice paddles and pestles and spoons laid out like lines of soldiers. 

Gaara looked up at him, and his eyes glowed with a strange light, brighter even than the candle ends Lee had carefully melted into one another, strung with fresh wicks. 

“There are so many things you can tell me about,” Gaara said softly. “I only ever see the things humans get up to outside, but they spend so much of their time indoors. I have a number of objects I’ve been curious about. Things I don’t understand the meaning of.” 

“I can help with that!” Lee shouted, then amended hastily, “Well, maybe. I’m not that bright. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about.” 

“Hmm.” Gaara’s eyes racked the room. It took him much less time to find what he was looking for with everything laid out neatly, despite the unfamiliar arrangement. He handed Lee a brass mirror with the glass broken out. 

“This is just a mirror,” Lee told him.

“I know _that_.” Gaara plucked it from Lee’s hands and spun it, so that he was looking at the back. “Do you know who it belonged to?”

The back was engraved with the fine petals of a cherry blossom and scrolling characters in delicate calligraphy. Lee scowled at it, searching for even a hint of familiarity. 

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, handing the mirror back. “I’ve never been good with reading. I don’t know what it says.”

Gaara brushed his apology off with the flick of his hand, setting the mirror back in its place between the flat, sparsely bristled makeup brushes and the dried-out, empty pots of old rouge. 

The next thing he handed Lee made him blush right up to the roots of his hair. 

“Ah, those are, uh—” Lee’s fingers shook, unwilling to touch the stack of oiled bamboo paper discs Gaara held out to him. “—for the. Um. For the bedroom?” Lee looked anywhere but Gaara’s faintly curious face. “So women don’t get—” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “—pregnant.”

The curse mark on Gaara’s forehead wrinkled as he raised his sparse brows. At first, Lee had thought he shaved them, like rich ladies did before they powdered their faces white, but up close he could see that they were simply very fine, and the same red as his hair, such that they blended into his dark skin. 

“Oh,” he said, his rough voice pitched low. “I see.” 

He snatched them back quickly, turning and stashing them somewhere Lee couldn’t see. 

He returned with a heavy-looking golden disc. 

“I found this one by the ocean,” he said as he handed it over. 

Lee held it close to his face, studying. The device was engraved all across its face, interlaid with gears almost like the ones the made Kankuro’s _karakuri_ puppets move. It had a dial in the center, and it looked similar to a clock, except that there were no numbers around the edge, only more interlocking gold circles and symbols. 

Lee shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” He held it back out for Gaara to take. “I’ve never been to the ocean, though, so if it’s something from there, then …” 

“Never?” Gaara pocketed the odd device. 

“I’ve never left the village before.”

Gaara’s thin lips went thinner. “I could take you,” he said, “to see it.”

“The ocean?” 

Gaara nodded hurriedly. 

“I would really like that! I’ve always wanted to see it!” Lee grabbed both of Gaara’s hands in his. “When can we go?”

That familiar bell chimed overhead. Lee dropped Gaara’s hands with a frown as it rang again. 

“Not now,” Gaara said over its insistent ring and the rushing sound that vanished him. “But soon.” 

But time seemed to travel very strangely underground, and Lee couldn’t be sure when ‘soon’ would be.

* * *

Gaara returned a few days later, his presence announced by his body crashing heavily against the doorframe.

“Are you all right?” Lee jumped to his feet and ran to him. 

His claws had dug into the wood of the door to keep himself upright. His face was pale and bloodless, his bony knees shaking under the hem of his short kimono.

“I’m fine,” he said, but his voice was wobbling and breathy. “I just need to eat something. It’s been longer for me than it’s been for you.” 

“What do you mean?” Gaara tried to take a step forward but stumbled as soon as his hand was no longer holding him up. Lee caught him with both arms and helped him to the cushions by the fire. His body was shockingly light. “How is that possible?” 

“Kankuro will be here soon with food,” Gaara hissed. “Then I can explain.” His head nodded on his shoulders, eyes glassy and unfocused. 

Lee looked frantically to the door, hoping to hear the clatter of Kankuro’s many feet and his entourage of dolls. 

Gaara started to list forward, towards the fire, and Lee only managed to catch him and haul him back at the last moment.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Gaara mumbled, his head lolling listlessly against Lee’s chest. “The fire can’t burn me.” 

“I think you’re delirious,” Lee said, just as several hands knocked at the door. He turned his head and shouted, “Come in!” 

Kankuro came through the door with a spool of bandages dangling from his shoulder like a sash. He was accompanied, not by his normal massive retinue of dolls, but by just four of the clockwork puppets, each one carrying a little cloth-wrapped parcel. 

“Kid’s back?” he called over to Lee. His frontmost arms stretched half the length of the room to pull himself across it in record time. “Aw, jeez.” He drew up short. “Haven’t seen him this messed up in a while.” His many-jointed legs folded impossibly, until his body was close to the ground. “Let me get a look at ya.”

“Stoppit, ‘m fine,” Gaara muttered, rolling his forehead against Lee’s collarbone. He cracked one eye open to glare at his brother. “I’m not even hurt.” He butted his head against Lee. It didn’t hurt; Lee hardly even felt the impact. “Tell him.”

“He said he’s just hungry,” Lee offered.

“Yeah I’ll bet.” Kankuro started unwrapping one of the little parcels. “How long’d Lady Kaguya have you this time?”

“Three weeks.” Gaara took the offered box from his brother’s hand and opened it. From the outside it looked like a bento, but whatever its contents were, they were scentless, and Lee couldn’t see them at all. 

He shifted with discomfort. Gaara’s body was still leaning heavily against his, pinning him in place. He could move him easily to get away, but with Gaara so weak he was afraid he might fall to the ground if Lee shifted, and then he really _would_ be hurt. But he didn’t want to watch Gaara eating … whatever it was that was in that box. 

Lee gentled him upright by the shoulders. “Is it okay if I, um … if I go? While you do that? I could go wait in Kankuro’s workshop.” 

Lee had been venturing out from Gaara’s room more and more recently, though always under Kankuro’s supervision. He had been told he had free reign of the palace, but he was too nervous to find out what might happen if he went exploring on his lonesome. Especially considering the mess he’d gotten himself into the last time he went running off alone. Kankuro’s workshop was creepy, sure, with its rolling dolls' eyes and sparking wires and multicolored jars of pastes that stank and bubbled, but it had to be better than this. Lee had never seen Gaara eat before, and he didn’t think he wanted to start now. He was really starting to like his strange host, but watching him dine on human flesh would probably put quite the damper on their blossoming relationship. 

Gaara withdrew his hand from the box. His fingertips were stained red. Lee suppressed a gag.

“Of course,” he said slowly, fixing Lee with a curious expression, exhausted eyes half-lidded. “Would watching me eat make you uncomfortable?” He half-mumbled the longer words— _uncomf’rt’ble_ —and his lips were dry and cracked. “Since you’re … fasting.”

“It’s not that.” Lee positioned Gaara very carefully before he stood, backing away. “It’s just that … don’t you eat, um … people?” 

Gaara’s eyes were halfway crossed with fatigue, but he still had the coordination to tilt the box in Lee’s direction. A few red berries dropped from its lip and rolled across the ground to land at Lee’s bare feet. 

“Tanuki are mostly herbivorous.” Gaara brought a handful of berries to his mouth. Red juice colored his lips and dripped down the corners of his mouth like spilled blood as he chewed and swallowed. When he continued speaking, the tips of his sharp teeth were crimson. “Those human stories have gotten to your head. Nobody in the palace eats people.” He set the empty box aside and took the next one from the puppet that held it up to him. He pulled a slice of pumpkin from it, stripping it quickly with his teeth. 

“But that mountain witch!” Lee cried. “With the baby! Wasn’t she fattening him up?”

Gaara’s eyes had brightened substantially, his strength returning to him as he sat up under his own power, but still he squinted at Lee, expression puzzled. “... Temari? My sister? That baby is her son. My nephew.” 

“But Kankuro said—!” 

Kankuro cackled that chittering laugh of his, fangs snapping. Gaara threw the rind of a pumpkin slice at him.

“Most of what Kankuro tells you is a lie. He thinks it’s funny to confuse you.” 

“Oh.” Lee sat back down on the cushion next to Gaara, feeling as though his legs had just given out under him. “Sorry.”

“You’ve been living here all this time under the impression that I _ate humans?_ ” The third box was full of little dried and salted fish. Gaara ate them whole without pausing to pick out the bones, which was a little bit disturbing, but nowhere near the display Lee had been mentally bracing himself for.

“I was pretty sure you weren’t planning to eat _me_ ,” Lee said, rubbing at his neck as if he could scrub away the flush that rose there. “At least, not after a while.”

Kankuro barked another laugh. “Humans sure are strange.” 

Lee glared up at him. “ _I’m_ strange? What about you? What’s all this nonsense about being gone for three weeks?” He turned back to Gaara, his ire rising. “There may not be any clocks down here, but I know I can’t go _weeks_ without sleeping. You couldn’t have been gone more than three days.”

“Ah,” Gaara said shortly. One of Kankuro’s long arms stretched between them to pass him a cup of water, and he gulped it quickly. “Above ground, humans see time like … beads on a string. Each one is the same size, and they go in a certain order. But time is … different, down here. Depending on where you are, or what you need it to do, it can move fast or slow, in whatever order you need. In Lady Kaguya’s realm—”

“The moon?” Lee interjected.

“Not the moon. I don’t know where you got that idea.” Gaara gave Lee a long-suffering look, as if waiting to see if there would be further interruptions, before he went on. “Lady Kaguya likes to play tricks with time. For those who depend on things like food, or water, or sleep, it makes them easier to manipulate.”

“That’s why our old man doesn’t go mess around with her anymore,” Kankuro added. “He got burned by her tricks one too many times. So he sends Gaara as his little errand boy.” 

Gaara hummed. “I’m not as easily diverted,” he said simply. “And I’m very difficult to kill.”

“On account of the curse,” Kankuro chimed in.

“The curse?” Lee asked. “You mean the—” He gestured at Gaara’s forehead. 

Gaara gave Kankuro a sharp look. 

“We agreed not to discuss that in front of him.”

“Sorry.” Kankuro waved his many arms in apology, but even under his heavy _bunraku_ paint, Lee could tell his expression was hardly contrite. “Didn’t mean to let it slip. But see, he already guessed! You should tell him.”

“Tell me what?” 

Something shuttered down behind Gaara’s eyes. Even though the firelight still flickered in them, even though the color had returned to his pallid face, his expression looked flat. Empty. 

“Don’t trouble yourself over it,” he said very quietly. 

And even as Kankuro packed away his things and retreated from the room with his puppets in tow, he didn’t say another word. 

Lee badgered him about it, as he tidied away the little trinkets Gaara had brought back from his travels (a compact mirror, a carved opal, a heavy metal seal for stamping letters). Lee could be _very_ stubborn, when he set his mind to something, but Gaara refused to budge even a centimeter. 

That night, he combed and braided Lee’s hair in silence. Even when it came time for Lee to extinguish the candle wicks and climb into the nest of blankets for bed, Gaara said nothing. He sat on the edge of the cushions and twined his fingers through the end of Lee’s braid and looked at him for a painfully long moment. 

“Won’t you tell me?” Lee whispered in the halfway dark, Gaara backlit by the fire’s low light so that his hair seemed to be aflame.

“No,” Gaara said. “Now sleep.”

And Lee did.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have access to JAMA, [here is an interesting article](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/286666) about ancient contraceptive methods, which is where I got the bamboo paper thing from. 
> 
> [Brass mirrors](https://i.imgur.com/hzTkn09.jpg), usually ornately decorated, were popular for much of Japan's history and feature prominently in Japanese folktales. 
> 
> The clock-looking thing Gaara found by the sea is a [mariner's astrolabe](https://i.imgur.com/u1lDAtI.jpg), which were used to determine a ship's latitude. They were in use from about the 14th to the 17th century, mostly in Europe.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** this chapter for more cannibalism mentions. Actually this fic probably just needs a blanket warning that cannibalism gets discussed in pretty much every chapter.

Gaara had been gone for nearly half a day when a new figure appeared in his doorway. Long, sharp nails crept around the edge of the door without knocking, and Lee was startled from his cleaning by the sound of the door creaking wide. 

In the aperture stood the witch Temari, the _yama-uba_. She was jostling the fat little baby on her hip, and in her taloned hand was a sheaf of paper.

“Oh,” she said. Despite the wildness of her white-blonde hair and the crags on her face, she had the voice of a very young woman. “You’re here. I expected you’d be with Kankuro.”

“He said he had something important to deal with. Something about a toymaker’s shop that caught fire?” 

Temari shouldered past Lee without another word, walking over to the cracked _torii_ gate top that Gaara sometimes used as a makeshift desk. She set her papers down and turned to Lee.

“Make sure Gaara gets those whenever he gets back.”

“Okay.” 

She was already halfway back to the door when Lee called out, “Um. I’m sorry for thinking you were a baby-eater.” 

Temari turned around and leveled him with a stare. Her eyes were the same forest green as the moss that grew on the north side of trees. “Hmph,” she huffed. “Yeah, Kankuro told me about that.” She took a few steps closer to him, still bouncing the baby in her arms. “You really thought I would eat my own kid?” 

“In my defense, Kankuro told me a very convincing lie.” 

She chuckled. “So you’re telling me you’re a gullible fool.” The baby in her arms stretched his hands up and yawned. Up close, Lee could see the buds of antlers sprouting from either side of his forehead. 

“Oh,” Lee said. “Um, so the man with the—” He spread his hands out at either side of his face, miming antlers. “—that’s his father?”

“My husband,” Temari confirmed. “Shikamaru. And this is Shikadai.” She adjusted her arms so the baby tipped towards Lee for closer inspection. He had round, dark eyes, very much like those of a fawn. 

“He’s adorable,” Lee cooed. 

Temari scoffed again, but her lips quirked in a smile. “Well,” she said. “Might as well get to know him now, if you’re gonna be sticking around.” 

“What do you—?” 

But she had already hefted the baby into Lee’s arms. He was warm and heavy, and he had that freshly baked smell that all babies had under his thatch of dark hair. Lee bounced him a little bit, trying to imitate his mother’s actions, and Shikadai giggled. 

“Huh, whaddya know?” She smirked. “You’re a natural.” 

“Back home, I sometimes had to watch Kurenai-san’s daughter,” Lee explained, as one of the baby’s fat little hands fisted in the end of his braid and pulled at it hard. “Little Mirai.” 

“So you’re the nurturing type,” Temari concluded. “Good. Gaara probably needs that.” 

Shikadai jammed a fistful of Lee’s hair in his mouth and gummed at it with enthusiasm, babbling. 

“I don’t think that is very good for you!” Lee attempted to gently prise his hair from the baby’s mouth, but his grip was surprisingly strong for such a little boy, and Lee didn’t want to hurt him.

“Leave it.” Temari waved it off. “The kid’s got four stomachs. He eats grass; he’ll be fine.” 

“Oh.” Lee went back to bouncing the baby gently.

“Listen,” Temari went on, “I know I’ve been giving you a hard time, but I really am glad you’re here. I think—well, no, I _know_ Gaara gets lonely, all by himself. Just him and this junk. Thanks for neatening it up, by the way,” she added. “I’ve been getting after him to clean up this sty for years.”

“Gaara’s … lonely?” Lee frowned. “But he’s always so busy. And when he’s here, he hardly talks.” 

“He might be doing better now that you’re here, but … he’s been alone his whole life. Running errands for our dad isn’t the same as spending quality time with people. It’s not easy for him, being the way he is. With the curse our father put on him.”

“The curse,” Lee repeated. “You know about it?” 

Temari flattened her lips. 

“Gaara doesn’t want us to tell you. He made Kankuro swear a blood oath, with that big mouth of his. It’ll sew his mouth shut if he blabs. But he trusts me.”

“Oh.” Lee’s face fell. “I’m sorry for—”

“Which means I can tell you and get away with it.” She smiled, and her black teeth were just as wickedly sharp as the talons on her fingers. 

“Our father is very powerful,” Temari began, “but that isn’t enough for him. He wants more power than he already has. More than his body can contain. So when he started having children, he wanted _us_ to act as his power, to one day surpass his strength.” She looked aside. “As long as he could control us, of course.” She picked up a folding paper fan from a pile and spun it in her hands as she talked. “He traded his soul to a demon for the ability, and then he started his … I guess you could call them _experiments_. Tinkering with spells and lineage. Hexes and inheritance. Mixing together the powers of different _yokai_ —different monsters—like they were ingredients in a stew. I came first. A mountain witch with the powers of a _kamaitachi_.”

“... A weasel _yokai_?” 

“I’ll show you.” She flicked her fingers through the air, almost too quickly for Lee to see. There was a sharp gust of wind that blew Lee’s bangs back. Suddenly, the heavy mortar in the middle of the room had fallen into two pieces, cloven neatly in two, the water inside it still adhered to either side, not a drop spilled. 

Lee gasped.

“But that wasn’t enough for him. And I was _weak_. I fell in love—” She nodded to the baby Lee still jostled in his arms. “—and pulled away from his influence. So he turned to my brothers. Kankuro has the strength of a _tsuchigumo_ but the mind of a brilliant inventor. But he’s not so easy to control. He’s got powerful magic, but his mind never focuses in just one direction. And he doesn’t take anything seriously. So that left …” 

“Gaara,” Lee supplied.

Temari nodded, snapping the fan shut. “Tanuki can shapeshift—you’ve seen that—but Gaara is … special. He has the power to move the earth at his disposal. And he was born kind. Much kinder than myself or Kankuro ever were. And that kindness made him susceptible to certain … methods of coercion that we wouldn’t have buckled to.” 

“Methods?” 

“Curses,” she clarified. “One curse, specifically. It was Kankuro who gave him the idea, actually, with those dolls of his.” 

“So, what’s the curse?”

Asking that question was Lee’s fourth mistake. 

Temari looked up from the fan in her hand to the baby in Lee’s arms, then to Lee’s face. “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

Lee shook his head.

“Human love.” 

Lee’s body froze. As soon as his movements stopped, Shikadai started to fuss, and Temari took him back from Lee’s arms. 

“Shh, shh, shh.” She bounced the baby and stroked his hair, her long talons surprisingly gentle. “Mommy’s got you.” 

Then she looked back up at Lee, and all at once he could see her true age in her eyes. There were hundreds of years of emotions warring within her. 

“Gaara is confined to our father’s service until he finds a human who loves him. It’s powerful, ancient magic, love. They say that when his curse is lifted, he’ll gain access to powers heretofore unknown. He’d be strong enough to overthrow our father. It might even make him stronger than Lady Kaguya.”

“So even if the curse is broken, your father still gets what he wants?” Lee’s fists clenched. “That doesn’t seem fair!” 

“It’s not about what’s fair. For our father, it’s a win-win proposition. Either he gets to keep Gaara in his service—and don’t get me wrong, Gaara is a force to be reckoned with even without that power that’s bound up in his forehead. He’s clever, and people _like_ him—” She said the word with faint distaste. “—which is more than can be said for our father. In the right hands—or the wrong ones—he’s a powerful tool. And if Gaara breaks the curse …”

“... Then he turns into a—a monster, and your father gets the heir he wanted,” Lee concluded. 

“So what he wants is less important to me.” Temari shrugged. “What I care about is what Gaara wants.”

“And what does he want?” 

“Isn’t it obvious? He wants to be loved.” Temari smiled slowly. “That’s why he’s obsessed with you.” 

Lee pointed to himself. “Me?” 

“Humans,” she clarified. “When he’s not running off doing our father’s bidding, he’s above ground watching people, gathering up their trash, trying to learn about them. I think he hopes that if he just does the right things in the right way, if he hoards up the right objects, that he’ll be _accepted_ by them. As if a human would be impressed with his pile of garbage.”

“I don’t think it’s garbage!” Lee’s face had gone hot. 

Temari huffed another laugh. “I guess you wouldn’t. Since you’ve been down here, it’s the longest I’ve ever seen him stay in the palace before. Normally he’d be off in the human world until he got injured, or until his magic ran so low he stumbled back down here and collapsed in exhaustion.” 

Lee frowned. “That sounds dangerous.” 

“It is. You saw the way his shoulder got twisted in that trap. That wasn’t the first time something like that has happened. It’d gotten to the point Lady Chiyo wouldn’t even heal him anymore.”

“Gaara mentioned something about her before. Lady Chiyo is …?”

“She’s our healer, and a damn fine one, too. But Gaara’s had to learn how to fend for himself. He was lucky it was you who came along and not a starving hunter. He’s clever, and he’s gotten himself out of some tight scrapes before, but he’s not ruthless enough.” Temari fanned her long nails out. “And sometimes you need to be a little ruthless to survive.” 

“I don’t think Gaara’s ruthless or—or _cruel_ at all,” Lee said slowly. “He’s been nothing but kind to me.”

“He has a soft heart,” Temari agreed. “An … almost human heart. That’s his weakness.”

The baby in her arms wriggled and started to cry quietly. 

“It’s his dinner time,” she announced. “But like I said, I’m glad you’re here. A human companion will keep Gaara … occupied. I hope you’ll stay awhile.”

“Temari-san,” Lee called, “thank you. For what it’s worth, you seem to have a pretty human heart yourself.”

“Gross.” She sneered and pointed back at Lee with one taloned finger. “Watch your mouth, or you’ll end up like that mortar over there. Just because I don’t feast on human flesh doesn’t mean I don’t know what to do when a human gets mouthy with me.” 

Before Lee could think to respond, a gust of wind had lifted her off her feet and carried her backwards through the room’s door. 

It slammed behind her, leaving Lee alone to think about Gaara. 

Lee thought about the curse, and all that it implied. If Gaara needed a human to love him in order to access some greater power, could it be that he was only being kind to Lee to trick him? To try to lure him in, so that he could overthrow his father? 

Lee had never gotten the sense that Gaara had any ulterior motive in having him there, that he desired anything other than Lee’s companionship. He had never _felt_ as though Gaara was lying to him. 

But … it was well-established at this point that Lee was easily taken in by sweet words. _A gullible fool_ , Temari had called him. And perhaps that was true. Gaara had called him _clever,_ but he was the only person who had ever said so. Suppose that, too, had been a lie? Gaara was always bringing Lee gifts, saying nice things to him, promising to look out for him. Touching his face, his hair, his hands. And Lee couldn’t deny that he had found himself growing more and more … affectionate towards Gaara, with his strange words and stranger ways. That he brightened whenever Gaara returned from one of his missions, and worried when he was gone too long. 

Maybe Lee was being warmed up. Not to be eaten, but for something worse. 

To have his heart stolen. 

A little breeze furled through the room, and a tall stack of old papers settled with a rustle. Lee looked around the cluttered room. He thought about Gaara’s soft heart, and the space inside it that he filled up with discarded objects. 

Was it so bad to be a fool, if you were treated kindly?

* * *

When Gaara returned late that night, Lee wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Temari told you about the curse,” he guessed immediately. He gestured to the split mortar, and its halves came back together and sealed with a little hiss.

Lee just stared at the floor. 

“I brought you these.” Gaara held up a pair of soft-soled slippers, the sort that would be worn indoors. “Your feet are getting rough from the stone.” Instead of pressing them into Lee’s hands as he normally would have, he instead set them on the faded red top of the _torii_ gate. Then he sat on one of the cushions near the fire, far away from where Lee stood. He curled his bony knees up under himself.

“Temari brought you some papers,” Lee muttered to the ground. He walked to the desk and picked up the slippers, and the papers along with them. To Lee’s eyes, they appeared to be blank, though they might have just been bewitched. “Thank you for the shoes.” 

He held the papers out to Gaara, standing far enough away that the tips of his claws could just touch their edges. Gaara didn’t move.

“They might be important.” Lee shook them a little, insistently. 

Gaara took them from him, but he did not look at them as he set them aside immediately. 

“You’re upset,” he said. “That’s more important.” 

Lee bit his lower lip. Gaara watched him fidgeting. Gaara’s body was very still, his eyes wary, like a prey animal waiting for a predator to pounce. 

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he said finally, gently. 

“Are you just being nice to me because you want me to break your curse?” Lee blurted. He balled his fists up at his side. “Because it doesn’t work like that!” he shouted at the floor. “I’m not going to fall in love with you just because you let me wear boy’s clothes and give me knives and touch my hair! I don’t mind spending time with you or being your friend, but I don’t want to stay here if you’re just—just _using_ me to get back at your dad!” 

When Lee looked up, his eyes wet and his chest heaving, Gaara was sitting back, his body taut as a bow string strung across a trap. His eyes were wide and startled.

He opened his mouth, all sharp teeth and rough pink tongue, then he closed it again. 

“I—” he started, then faltered. He sat up on his knees. “Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not crying!” Lee yelled, but he was. Fat, embarrassing tears were rolling down his cheeks. He scrubbed at his eyes furiously. 

Suddenly, the rough pads of fingers were on his face, clawed hands pushing his own aside. He hadn’t even heard Gaara stand. Cool skin brushed the tears away. 

“Temari said you were lonely,” Lee said wetly. “I was lonely too, before I came down here. I had friends and—and my teacher, but … I know what it’s like, to be the only person like you around. I want to stay awhile, like she asked. I want to _help_. … But not if it’s like _that_. Not if I’m just going to be a stepping stone—” 

“I’m sorry,” Gaara said softly. He folded up the sleeve of his kimono and rubbed at Lee’s cheek until it was dry. “I never meant to make you feel like an object, or a tool. You’re not that. You’re …” He sucked a thin breath through his nose, nostrils flaring. “... more than that. Different from that. To me.”

“You didn’t.” Lee shook his head, his eyes stinging and hot. “But when Temari told me about the curse, I just thought … what if you’ve been lying to me?”

Gaara lifted Lee’s chin with one clawed thumb. He held his gaze very steadily. “I have _never_ lied to you,” he said. 

The wavering gold of his eyes was entrancing, and Lee believed him, inasmuch as he could believe anything. 

Lee nodded. 

“Why don’t you want to go back?” Gaara murmured. His face was terribly close to Lee’s; Lee could see all the hairline cracks on the skin of his lower lip, how they shone when he wet them with his rough tongue. 

“I _do_ want to go back.” But Lee’s protest was nothing but a whisper. 

“Do you?” Gaara’s eyes raked down Lee’s face and stopped, hovering, somewhere around his chin. “You haven’t tried to leave, not once.” 

Lee watched the words falling from his lips.

“I … I don’t _know_ ,” he stammered. “My life before wasn’t _bad_ , it was just … wrong. For me. I miss Neji and Tenten and Gai-sensei, but I don’t miss wearing girl’s clothes, and I don’t miss being called—” 

The name stuck in Lee’s throat. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t _remember_ it. He looked at Gaara in a panic.

“I don’t remember it!” he gasped. “I don’t remember my name!” He grabbed his own throat as if the action would urge the word to his lips, lurching away from Gaara’s grasp. 

Gaara just stood where Lee had left him, eyes wide. Why was he just _standing there?_

The little pinprick scars on Lee’s palm burned. His lungs felt like they had frozen in his chest. He could barely draw breath. His heart pounded.

“Gaara! What was my _name?_ ” 

Gaara’s throat worked.

“I can’t say it,” he rasped. 

“You know it? You have to tell me it if you know it!” 

“I _can’t_.” Gaara shook his head frantically, his eyes clenched tightly shut.

“Why _not?_ ” Lee’s voice had pitched up into a shriek. 

“Because it’s not yours anymore!” Gaara snarled, his teeth bared. He looked in that moment more like an animal than a person, wide-eyed and terrified, hackles raised. “Because it would _hurt you_.” 

Lee’s hands dropped. All of his terror faded from him suddenly into a cold numbness.

“... What?” He could barely hear the whisper of his own voice over the ringing in his ears.

“You gave it away.” Gaara’s face had fallen still, and that flat, emotionless mask had come up and washed away his terrifying grimace. “I thought you understood. That name doesn’t belong to you anymore … it belongs to me.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Kama-itachi](https://i.imgur.com/MqNdg8b.jpg) are weasel _yokai_ with sickle-like claws that can cut people. Temari's weasel summons that we see, like, once in canon is supposed to evoke this _yokai_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's going to be a slight change in the update schedule! Chapter 6 will go up next Saturday, because I have something else planned for Wednesday. 
> 
> **Warnings** this chapter for cannibalism (threatened), fear of heights/flying, and mention of drowning. A character is briefly concerned that he's been misgendered (he hasn't been). There's a brief, non-explicit mention of familial abuse.

The door to Gaara’s room shut with a dull thud.

“Kankuro said you were talking about work again,” Gaara announced without preamble. It was the most he had said to Lee in a few days, outside of the customary _good mornings_ and _thank yous_ and _good nights_. “Are you bored?”

Lee looked up from the disassembled puppet in front of him, its scatter of wooden gears and hairpin screws strewn across the floor. Kankuro had given it to him to take apart, and now Lee was trying to figure out how to put it back together. So far he had only succeeded in confusing himself.

“I just said I could help with work, if you all needed a hand.” Lee scooped the puppet parts into a little pile to make room for Gaara to sit by the fire. 

He hadn’t forgiven Gaara for taking his name—he was still pretty heated about it, in fact—but Lee had admitted to himself, over the long nights that he’d lain awake with Gaara’s eerie golden eyes fixed on the side of his face, that at least on some level he’d known what he was doing, when Gaara asked him for his name and he gave it freely. He knew the stories. He easily could have refused, and he didn’t think Gaara would have forced the matter. He didn’t miss his old name, the name that wasn’t Lee; it was more the principle of the matter that rankled him. But insofar as he remembered, he had never really _liked_ his old name. It hadn’t felt right, hadn’t fit. 

Besides, it was lonely, living like this, he and Gaara circling the same floor, following the same routine without ever really interacting. 

“As long as it doesn’t involve me turning into a deer,” Lee added.

Gaara looked at Lee—really _looked at_ him—for the first time since their fight. His sparse eyebrows furrowed, the curse mark on his forehead stretching. 

“Who said anything about deer?”

“Ah—” Lee slapped his hand over a tiny, golden spring, which seemed to have developed a mind of its own and was struggling to hop away. “Kankuro said that Shikamaru—Temari’s husband?—that he used to be a human, before he started working with Temari.”

The spring struggled to break free from Lee’s grasp, writhing like a living creature. Gaara pointed one clawed finger at it, and it fell still. 

“Kankuro also thinks it’s hilarious to make you repeat whatever wild fibs he’s come up with,” Gaara said flatly. “The Nara spirits have been around for as long as the forest outside your village has. Shikamaru was never _human_.” 

“Oh.” Lee smushed the spring between his thumb and index finger, then placed it back in the pile with the rest of the puppet parts. 

“If you’re bored, you can come with me the next time Father sends me on an errand.”

Lee looked up at Gaara. He could tell his eyes had gone enormous from the look on Gaara’s face. There was the tiniest hint of a hesitant smile quirking the corner of Gaara’s lip. He held one palm out to Lee in offering. 

“You really mean it?” 

Gaara nodded, just the slightest inclination of his chin. 

“I’d _love_ to!” Lee slapped his hand into Gaara’s open palm and squeezed his hand hard. “Thank you so much!” 

He held Gaara’s hand until Gaara started to wince and draw back. Then he dropped it immediately, babbling an apology.

“It’s fine.” Gaara shook out his hand, flexing his fingers to stretch the aching bones. “The next time Father sends for me, I’ll bring you along.” Gaara paused. “As long as it’s not too dangerous.”

“Even if it’s dangerous, I’d still want to go!” 

“Out of the question,” Gaara said shortly. “I won’t put you at risk.” 

Lee sulked at that answer, but he had to accept the wisdom of it. It wasn’t like he could do _magic_. He couldn’t even control a bewitched spring.

* * *

The next time the bells rang out overhead, Lee scrambled to his feet before he was even properly awake.

“Gaara!” he shouted. “Gaara, did you hear that?”

Gaara was already standing, halfway across the room, though the combination of the way the red fluff of his hair was pressed flat on one side and the slight pins-and-needles feeling in Lee’s shoulder made it clear that he’d been resting as well. 

“Yes,” he said, somewhat unnecessarily, voice raised over the bells’ tolling. “Let me go see what it is.”

“And then you’ll come back for me, right?” 

“If it’s not too risky,” Gaara reminded him. 

Lee deflated. The bells chimed a final time and Gaara vanished with that poured-rice sound. 

Unlike every other time he’d been summoned, though, he returned to the room in short order, with a scroll clenched in one clawed fist. 

Lee was already fully dressed in his _haori_ and halfway into his slippers, after realizing he didn’t have a proper pair of outdoor shoes. He’d even tied his plait up, folded on the top of his head, the way men in the village did, a style he’d never before been allowed to wear. 

“We can go?” he said eagerly. 

Gaara gave him a very strange look. It was hard to tell on his dark skin, but Lee could have sworn his cheeks were flushed. He must have exerted himself to come back so quickly. 

“Your hair looks nice like that,” he said, instead of answering Lee’s question. He held up his other hand, in which were clutched a pair of tatami sandals. “Shoes?” 

Lee took them from his outstretched hand and slipped his feet into them, buzzing with excitement. 

“They fit perfectly!” Lee wiggled his toes. 

“This was good timing, actually,” Gaara said, quite obviously looking anywhere but at Lee. “You said you wanted to see the ocean.”

“We’re going to the _ocean?_ ” 

Gaara just nodded, and because he was looking away, he was taken by surprise when Lee threw his arms around him in an embrace. He staggered back a few steps, thrown by the impact and Lee’s weight. 

Lee squeezed him so hard that his feet left the ground. Gaara’s hands patted at his sides weakly. 

When Lee finally set him back down, Gaara looked shockingly disheveled from just that small action. He quickly smoothed the front of his kimono and finger-combed his disorderly hair. His eyes were wide and a little startled, and the skin of his face was now obviously blood-dark. 

“Um,” he said with unusual hesitance, then cleared his throat. “Are you ready to go?” 

Lee nodded so hard he felt as though his head would fly right off his neck, practically bouncing on his toes. 

“Right.” Gaara shook his shoulders and steeled himself. “Come with me.” 

He led Lee through the winding hall of the palace, past rooms Lee had never seen in his travels with Kankuro, down staircases and sloping ramps, descending deeper and deeper into the earth. The pale tan of the stone walls bleached white as they traveled, and the heat became almost oppressive as they wound their way down. Soon Lee found himself shedding his _haori_ and tying the arms around his waist like a sash, desperate for the faintest breeze he could feel through his thinner under layers. The dry heat made sweat spring up everywhere, even inside the shells of his ears and between the dense hairs of his eyebrows. 

Gaara appeared totally unaffected. In fact, the warmer it got, the more relaxed he seemed to become. 

Finally the passageway they were in ended with a burst of bright white and dusty air, and Gaara led Lee through the exit. 

Lee squinted in the harsh light. 

He certainly wasn’t in the forest of Konoha any longer. 

Sand stretched out as far as the eye could see, in great ripples and waves, heaped into massive hills and dropping into deep gullies. Everything was washed out and sun-bleached, even the dried husks of the woody plants that shriveled at their feet and trembled with the howling wind. The sun beat down from overhead, blistering. 

Gaara held out a hand, and two piles of sand swarmed up from the earth and hovered in the air beside him. Very gingerly, he stepped up onto one. It carried him up into the air, until he was standing at about the height of Lee’s waist.

“Step up,” he said, his voice halfway lost to the whistle of the wind, and gestured to the second, empty sand platform. 

Lee eyed it warily. “I won’t fall through?” 

Gaara crossed his arms. For all that the sand roiled beneath his feet, he stood remarkably steadily, hardly even swaying as the sand seethed under him. 

“It’s either these or the tea kettle, and I don’t relish getting in _that_ thing again.” 

Lee had no idea what he was talking about, but the idea of trying to fit inside a teapot—the idea of being crammed into a small, dark space with Gaara—was enough to make his heart race. The thought gave him the courage to step up onto the little disk of sand. Gaara raised his hand up, and the platform Lee was on rose to the same level as Gaara’s, floating in the thin air. 

Lee was too knock-kneed to even be properly nervous. The platform _felt_ steady enough beneath his feet, but there was something about looking down and seeing nothing between yourself and the ground that made his gut churn. It almost reminded him of climbing the tallest treetops in the woods when he was younger … if the branches had been hanging in mid-air instead of attached to a tree trunk. 

Gaara urged the little disks forward a few meters, and Lee immediately dropped to his knees to grab the edge of the thing for dear life. 

Gaara gave him a skeptical look. 

“I’m fine!” Lee reassured him. “Go ahead.” 

Gaara waved his hands, and the two disks sped forward through the air. The wind whipped past Lee’s face. He shut his eyes tight and tried not to be sick. 

Suddenly, it all stopped. 

Lee had a brief moment of terror where he feared the ground had dropped out from under him entirely, that he was plummeting to the earth in time with the lurch of his stomach. But when he pried his eyes open, they were just … still. Hovering. Lee looked over his shoulder and saw the white stone entrance to the palace still behind them. They had hardly traveled at all. 

He looked to Gaara in confusion. 

“This isn’t working,” Gaara said. He was frowning, one of his sharp teeth denting his lower lip. “You’re terrified.” 

“I’m okay!” Lee protested. “I can do this!” 

Gaara quirked an eyebrow. Then he clapped his hands, and the two disks merged seamlessly to form a single, much wider platform. 

“There.” He bent down and held out his arm. Lee took it with shaking fingers. “That’s better, right?” 

He stood up and, with surprising strength, pulled Lee to his feet alongside him. 

“You can hold on to me, if that will make you feel more secure.” 

Still not looking down, Lee wrapped his arms around Gaara’s waist and pressed his face to Gaara’s neck. 

They began to move again, and Lee had to admit, he did feel much safer up against Gaara’s back, with his arms snug across Gaara’s stomach, tense and wiry with muscle. Lee buried his face in the back of Gaara’s head, inhaling deeply. His hair was warm from the sun overhead, and he smelled like the dust shaken out of floor mats. 

The journey seemed to pass in no time at all.

* * *

When Lee’s feet touched the ground and he opened his eyes, the sky was gone again. 

He hardly had time to miss it, because above them instead was the arcing roof of a vast crystal chamber, its ceiling hung with stalactites of a rock so clear white it looked like ice. The stone floor was slick with cyanotic algae, which reflected off the rocky overhang and made the whole space glow with an eerie blue-green light. 

The wet stone quickly gave way to a thin, sandy shore. Its sediment was quite unlike that of the desert; rather than fine grains of tan dust, the sand seemed to be made of hundreds of thousands of tiny stones in a dozen shades of blue and green and white, all worn smooth by the water that lapped at it with gentle, rolling waves. 

Lee looked out at the ocean, his eyes wide and his heart thudding in his chest. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. He had known the ocean was vast, but he hadn’t expected _this_. The edges of the cavern were so distant as to be indistinct, and the shore stretched indefinitely. The white foam of the waves gave way to a flat blue so dark it was almost black, vanishing against what couldn’t quite be called the horizon. A placid breeze rolled the smell of salt air towards him.

In the distance, balls of golden light like tiny suns rolled, chasing each other across the surface of the sea. They quickly came closer, and as they approached Lee noticed that their centers spun with shadows that looked like running legs, which seemed to be propelling them on. Lee’s hair blew back as they rioted right past his face, followed by a noise that sounded like children’s laughter. 

He realized, belatedly, that he had yet to let go of Gaara’s waist. He did so quickly, excusing himself for his rudeness. Gaara seemed not to hear him, distracted by fussing with the remaining desert sand, which was scurrying about his ankles and occasionally leaping for his knees, looking like nothing so much as a pack of eager puppies. 

“It’s not used to the water,” Gaara explained, stooping down to gather it in his arms. It churned a few times, then seemed to settle into a state of somnolence. The whole experience was so dizzying that Lee didn’t even stop to consider _how_ Gaara was managing to carry a whole armful of apparently sentient sand without dropping a single grain. 

Gaara nudged him with an elbow, and Lee half-staggered forward to the edge of the water. Tidepools dotted the length of the shore, lit up from within by a speckled phosphorescence, like little cups of stars. Lee rolled the hems of his pants above his knees and bent down to look closer. 

Something many-legged ran across his hand in the dim. He drew his arm back in shock. Scuttling away from him was a crab, with a white shell that seemed to scowl with a human face.

“Heike crabs,” Gaara said simply, as the crab hastened away with its sideways gait, clicking its claws, to join a cluster of its companions further down the beach. “You can eat them, but they scream terribly.” 

Something in the tidepool splashed, and Lee turned to watch in awe as a small squid swam past, its skin dappled with jewels of deep purple and ruby red. He reached a finger down to try to touch it, and it darted away with a spurt of ink that sparkled like gold dust as it floated down through the water. He stifled a giggle. 

Another nearby pool was full of small, hard-backed crustaceans with tails like fish, whose bodies were gold and green like old, mottled copper. Yet a third contained a turtle with a shell covered in weeds so long and fine they looked like a full head of hair. 

Lee’s knees wobbled as he got to his feet, and he would have fallen if it hadn’t been for Gaara’s slight body behind him, propping him up.

“It’s all so amazing,” he breathed. 

“There’s more to see,” Gaara told him, guiding the sand with his hands back into a platform. His motions were as precise as if he were tuning a _biwa_ by ear, careful to keep the sand high above the water. He stepped up onto the platform and held a hand down for Lee to join him. “Are you ready?” 

As loath as Lee was to leave this beautiful place, he was just as eager to see the next wonder, and he grabbed Gaara’s hand easily, letting himself be pulled into the air as if he weighed nothing at all. His clothing rippled with an unseen wind as he touched down beside Gaara on the sand platform.

They began to travel slowly across the water, Gaara’s motions much more cautious, more reserved than when they had sped across the dunes. This time, Lee kept his eyes open to take in the sights. The ocean smoothed out gradually, until it was flat as a black mirror, the reflection of the sand flying above it like their own personal moon. Overhead, the icy crystal stalactites thinned, the cavern’s high ceiling arching away, until with a sudden gust of cool air, they were out under the sky again. 

Lee looked up at the sky. Overhead, the stars danced—not shimmered, as they did back home, but truly _danced_ —twisting and cartwheeling through the air, forming ever-new constellations, darting like schools of fish. Lee had been told to wish on falling stars, but even he couldn’t think of enough wishes to place on these strange, new lights, whole handfuls of them plummeting to earth at once and rising again right before his eyes. 

Ahead of them, something breached the surface of the sea with a great splash. It was a whale—or, at least, the skeleton of one, white and glossy and utterly bare of flesh. It hit the water with a sound like a thunderclap, and Gaara steered them higher in the air so they wouldn’t get wet. 

In its wake rose up cloudy shapes, like balls of cotton floating to the surface of the ocean. At first, Lee thought they must be clumps of seaweed, pale in the moonlight, disturbed from the ocean floor by the motions of the skeletal whale. 

The white shapes moved relentlessly upwards, growing larger and larger until they crested the surface, and Lee could make out that they were not kelp at all, but wavering shapes like men carved from mist, their hair blowing around their heads and obscuring their faces. 

Gaara grit his teeth.

“Lend us a _hishaku_ …” they said, all in one voice. They reached out with transparent hands and groped for the edge of the sand platform, but their fingers were insubstantial, and fell right through the grains.

Gaara cursed under his breath, the motions of his fingers tight with strain as he urged the sand on faster. 

“Lend us a spoon …” the ghosts moaned. 

Lee loosed one hand from his tightly fisted grip on Gaara’s upper arm to pat his pockets. But all he had were his few remaining chestnuts. 

“I’m sorry!” he shouted at the ghosts, and they all turned as one mass to look at him. He still couldn’t make out their faces, but he could feel the pressure of their hundreds of eyes. “I don’t have anything like that. If I had one, I would give it to you!” 

For a moment, the ghosts all paused, their only motion the bobbing of the waves beneath them. They turned towards each other, babbling words that were too indistinct for Lee to understand. Then they wavered, and, one-by-one, dropped back beneath the sea. 

“That was foolhardy,” Gaara muttered, his golden eyes narrowed. “Do you even know what those were?” 

Lee shook his head mutely.

“ _Funa-yurei_. They’re vengeful spirits. If you’d given them a spoon, they only would have multiplied, and scooped water up and over us until we drowned. The sand is weak to water; I wouldn’t be able to hold it together.” 

“I thought the curse meant you couldn’t be killed,” Lee said.

“No,” Gaara said shortly. “But you can. And besides, that doesn’t mean I can’t feel pain. I’d rather die than spend a thousand years without air, being tortured by evil spirits at the bottom of the ocean.”

“They didn’t seem so bad,” Lee said. “They just seemed hungry. And look—!” 

He pointed out ahead of them. 

In the places where the _funa yurei_ had fallen beneath the waves, lights had begun to flicker. First they were only few and faint, but then they grew more numerous and steadier. As Lee and Gaara approached, their shapes resolved into the shining scales of thousands of silvery fish, the long trail of their school winding like a cobblestone path to the lights of a distant shore. 

Gaara exhaled through his nose.

“Clever.” He looked at Lee, and his eyes glowed with a faint wonder that couldn’t all be attributed to the sparkling sea life below them. “That’s our destination.” 

In short order, they touched down on the shore of a beach. Lee was grateful to be back on solid ground as Gaara stashed his sand for safekeeping in the crook of a wind-scarred tree. The sand here was very fine, and black as the night sky overhead. It crunched inside Lee’s sandals. It was still warm, despite the late hour, and the ground beneath their feet rose and subsided slightly, like the slow breathing of some massive creature. 

“This is the Isle of Dragons,” Gaara said, his head craned up until his mouth was right against Lee’s ear. His breath was warm, and Lee shivered. 

“Are we going that way?” Lee pointed to the head of the beach. Through a massive _torii_ gate made of whale bones, Lee could see a high, jagged ridge, punctuated by distant fires. Lanterns, he thought. Maybe a village. 

“The Isle of Dragons is populated only by women,” Gaara explained. “Men aren’t allowed in their village.”

“Oh.” Lee had the sudden, sickening thought that maybe _that_ was why Gaara had brought him here. Why Gaara thought he would be safe here. 

“We’ll have to wait here,” Gaara continued. “I’ve shapeshifted to sneak in before, but if you tried it, they’d kill you.”

“ _Oh._ ” The threat of his death came almost as a relief. 

“Before someone comes …” Gaara turned until he was facing Lee and took both of his hands in his claws. “... in case something happens to me, I’m going to teach you a spell.”

“Is something going to happen to you?” Lee studied Gaara’s face. The sparse light from the shifting stars overhead made his expression even more difficult to read. 

“It’s unlikely, but I need to know you’ll be safe.” 

“But I can’t do magic.” 

Gaara huffed so hard that his bangs blew up and off his forehead in a little flutter. “You made it to the palace. You don’t think that was a sort of magic?” 

“If I was magic, wouldn’t I know it?” Lee raised his voice, irritated. “I would be able to feel it, right? I’ve been down here—” _Were_ they even below ground anymore? Did it matter? “—all this time, and I haven’t so much as made a leaf wiggle. If I was magic like you, I could just wave my fingers, and—” 

“Hush.” Two of Gaara’s clawed fingers pressed across Lee’s lips. 

An impulse flashed across Lee’s brain that he quickly stifled. He shut his mouth instead, and waited for Gaara to continue. 

Gaara raised his eyebrows, staring Lee down for a beat. When it was clear Lee wasn’t going to protest, he dropped his hand and continued. 

“If you’re in danger, if you need to escape,” Gaara said very slowly, dark eyes tracking over Lee’s face to confirm his understanding, “go up to the edge of the water and say these words: ‘Water will not drown me.’” 

“Water will not drown me,” Lee echoed, and he felt a wave of icy cold rise from his toes all the way up to the top of his head. 

“‘Fire will not burn me.’” Gaara’s clawed fingers pricked at Lee’s palms, right over his old scars. 

“Fire will not burn me,” Lee repeated, and his skin seared with heat. 

“‘The earth will see me home.’” 

“The earth will see me home,” Lee whispered, as his body regained its normal temperature. “Wait, does that mean—?” 

“Probably not,” Gaara cut him off. “But it will take you where you feel safest.” 

Behind him, there was a faint splash, like a pebble dropped in a pool. Gaara dropped Lee’s hands and turned, edging his body in front of Lee’s like a shield. Lee could see easily over his shoulder to the water’s edge, where the domed crown of a head was rising from the waves, shedding water all the way. 

It was a woman, Lee realized after a moment, though her sopping hair was shorn short and choppy. At first he thought she was wearing a scandalously tight robe, but as she came up from the water as easily as if she were ascending a staircase, he realized her skin was covered in shimmering black scales, the same color and iridescence as the sand on the beach. 

In one hand she held a rope javelin, its point wickedly sharp, and she opened her other palm as she approached and spat into it. Fat, round pearls landed in her open hand. 

“Gaara!” she said. In the ear without the worm magic, her language sounded like a melodic, bubbling song. “What brings you here?” Her voice was fond, her tone familiar, warm with affection in such a way that Lee wished he were the one standing in front of Gaara instead. 

“Matsuri.” He inclined his head towards her. “It’s been a long time.”

“Too long.” She beamed at him, and the teeth within her mouth shone like the inside of mollusc shells. Her eyes flicked to Lee. “And you brought a friend!” She paused, sniffing the air; the flat bridge of her nose wrinkled. “A human? Wait, don’t tell me this is—”

“Yes,” Gaara said quickly, before she could continue her question. 

“ _Oh._ ” 

That single sound was heavy with a meaning Lee could not decipher. He thought of the stories that had seemed to circle him back in the palace. Was it possible that word that Gaara had brought a human below ground had traveled so far, so quickly? 

“There hasn’t been a human man here in a long, long time,” Matsuri said. “If my sisters see him, they’re liable to tear him to pieces and eat him.”

“Let’s make sure they don’t see him, then,” Gaara replied archly. 

Matsuri grinned. “Don’t worry so much. He’ll be fine.” 

She plucked a strand of kelp from behind her ear, and reached out to tuck it behind Lee’s instead. A strange, shimmery feeling overtook him, and when he looked down, he realized he could no longer see his hands nor his feet. 

“There.” She clapped her hands. There were thin webs of skin between her fingers. “Perfectly hidden.” 

Gaara turned around, looking slightly to the right of where Lee actually stood. “Will you be okay to wait here?” he asked. “If you see anyone, just stay quiet.” 

Lee reached up for Gaara’s face and turned his cheek just slightly, so Gaara was facing him properly. Gaara touched the hand on his cheek in surprise, then felt cautiously up the length of Lee’s invisible arm until he was holding Lee’s face in his palm. Very gently, his clawed fingers mapped Lee’s face, as though searching for any sign of distress. 

Lee leaned a little closer, only really aware of his own movements by the way the angle of Gaara’s arm shifted.

“I thought you said they didn’t eat people here,” Lee whispered.

Gaara cast his eyes over to Matsuri, who was standing with one hand on her scaled hip, idly spinning her rope javelin in the other.

“Nobody _in the palace_ eats people,” Gaara hissed back. “This place is different, outside of my control.” 

That was enough to send Lee slinking back into the shadows.

“Walk with me,” Matsuri declared, slinging an arm over Gaara’s thin shoulders. “And tell me all about what demands your father has for the women of the Isle of Dragons.” 

They vanished up the beach, and Lee was left sitting alone with the cold fist of jealousy that gripped his heart, under the branches of the skinny tree where Gaara had hidden his sand, where even his footprints in the black sediment wouldn’t be seen. 

A few scale-covered women came and went as he sat there, knees up under his chin and arms around his legs. They slipped under the waves alone or in pairs, rising back out of the ocean with mouthfuls of pearls, their scaled skin shimmering, babbling to one another in their bubbling language. None of them seemed to notice Lee’s presence. 

He contented himself with watching the ebb and flow of the water, the white foam of it crashing against the black sand of the beach. The ocean was still magnificent, but it was much less enjoyable without Gaara’s company. 

Eventually, the comings and goings of the women slowed, and one by one the torches inland extinguished themselves.The breeze rolling off the water was cool enough that Lee shrugged back into his _haori_ , grateful to have brought it. It was hard to tell how much time had passed under the wheeling of the unfamiliar constellations overhead, but Lee couldn’t help but feel Gaara had been gone a long time. 

He began to worry. Even far up the beach where the sand was dry, there were long strands of kelp that grew like grass, and Lee occupied his nervous fingers with knotting them. Into each knot he wove a promise—that Gaara was all right. That he was safe, wherever he was. That he hadn’t been torn apart or eaten or—or worse. 

_What could be worse?_ Lee wondered, and hated that the answer in his mind was in the shape of Matsuri’s affectionate smile, the casual way she’d placed her webbed hands on Gaara’s shoulders. 

He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he barely noticed the sound of footsteps approaching. 

Thin, bare feet and knobby knees came into his field of vision. He looked up. 

Gaara stood above him, gazing some distance above Lee’s head. He was alone, and apparently unharmed. In his hand, he was holding something flat and green, with a bite taken out of it. His brow furrowed. He looked as nervous as Lee had been feeling.

“Hello?” he whispered to the air, his hands reaching out tentatively, blindly. 

Lee pulled the piece of kelp from behind his ear and tucked it in his sleeve..

“There you are.” Gaara’s expression hardly shifted, but Lee could hear the relief in his voice. The corner of his mouth twitched in something that could almost be called a smile. He held the food in his hand out towards Lee. “Would you like some seaweed?”

It was like no seaweed Lee had ever seen, thick and solid as an _onigiri_ and a dark, brownish green. “It looks like a fern-seed cake,” Lee said. His stomach grumbled irritably, and he thought of the chestnuts in his pocket. “What does it taste like?” 

“Grass.” Gaara took another bite and chewed. “And salt.” 

“No, thank you.” Lee got to his feet and brushed the black sand from his trouser legs. “Did you get what you needed?” 

“Mostly I received unsolicited advice. But yes, I passed along Father’s message.” Gaara thinned his lips.“The women of Dragon Isle are … intractable. They’ll do with the information what they will.” 

“Is that … bad?” Lee hedged. “Good?”

“Father will be angry, and he’ll take it out on me,” Gaara said with an expression of blank indifference. Lee could not quite tell whether his impassivity was authentic or feigned. It was possible that Gaara himself didn’t know. “But he always has the option to do these things himself, and he doesn’t.” He looked out towards the water. With an almost casual wave of his hand, he called the sand down from the tree’s branches. “Are you ready to leave?”

“If you are.” There was a strange tension in the line of Gaara’s spine, and Lee almost reached for him before letting his hand fall back to his side. 

Gaara helped him back onto the platform of sand and waited with his arms raised for Lee to grab his waist. He turned to look back at Lee, and the smile hidden between his sharp teeth was small, but genuine. 

“If we travel quickly, we’ll have spare time for you to spend back at the Crystal Shore.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tatami Sandals](https://i.imgur.com/SSGMgYH.jpg) are lined with the same material that makes up tatami mat flooring. 
> 
> [Heike crabs](https://i.imgur.com/AklZS2H.jpg), also called Samurai Crabs, are real, but they don't scream. Some of the other creatures Lee encounters are inspired by [Firefly squids](https://i.imgur.com/jvFhGMj.png), [Gazami crabs](https://i.imgur.com/aUYHyjC.png), and [gold lobsters](https://i.imgur.com/nZOmjjw.jpg). He also sees a [minogame](https://i.imgur.com/YmTt1LF.jpg), or Straw Coat Turtle, which are a real phenomenon of turtles with weeds growing on their shells. In Japanese folklore, they're said to break the teeth of any comb with their hair.
> 
> [Bakekujira](https://i.imgur.com/oWilM8B.png) (lit. "ghost whale") aren't actually ghosts at all; they're giant skeletons. They don't generally do much other than show up and freak people out. 
> 
> [Hishaku](https://i.imgur.com/z3eIKq7.jpg) are bamboo water ladles used in Japanese tea ceremonies. 
> 
> [Funa-yurei](https://i.imgur.com/W6yLm7L.png) are the vengeful spirits of people who died in shipwrecks.
> 
> [Fern-seed cakes](https://i.imgur.com/cPNCL9P.jpg) ( _warabi mochi_ ) are cold, glutinous desserts made from Bracken starch (instead of rice gluten, like traditional mochi are).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the skipped update. In the meantime, I posted a superhero AU, if you're into that sort of thing: [I Need a Hero](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25998550/chapters/63209677).
> 
> **Warnings** this chapter: restriction of food continues to a harmful extent, parental abuse is implied, Lee experiences mild physical dysphoria, and a character is kissed while in a state of partial unawareness.

Lee was gnawing on a chestnut when Gaara came back from debriefing with his father. He had been trying to make them stretch, going as long as he could between meals—if a single chestnut could even be called a ‘meal’—but his supply was dwindling fast, his pocket concerningly lightweight. 

Gaara appeared with the sound of a bucket of dirt being overturned. He stood very still, just watching Lee chewing for a long moment.

Lee swallowed loudly.

“Father wants to see you.” Gaara’s mouth hardly moved around the words. He spoke so lowly that Lee wasn’t quite sure he had heard him correctly. “Us, that is. Both of us.” 

Lee unfolded from his seated position quickly, gathering his feet up from where they had been warming by the fire and shoving them into his soft slippers. 

“Do I need to bring anything?”

“I told him I wouldn’t allow him to speak to you if I wasn’t there.” Gaara ignored Lee’s question entirely. “So now he’s furious, instead of merely irritated.” 

Lee patted his clothing anyway, making sure that Neji’s knife was tucked into his sash. It probably wouldn’t help him any, if it came down to a confrontation between Gaara’s father and the two of them, but it comforted him to have it there.

“So, how do we get there?” Lee asked, as Gaara led him out into the hall. “Is it as far away as the desert?” 

“No,” Gaara said, pressing his palm to the stone wall across from the door to his room. “And yes.” There was a great scraping noise, and a hole opened up in the rock. It was less a hallway and more a horizontal dark pit, with its terminus swallowed up by shadows. “Father’s chambers aren’t connected directly to the palace. That’s by design. You wouldn’t want to stumble across him on purpose, wandering around here.” 

The passage Gaara led Lee down was pitch black. No demon fires or magical sparks lit the way. Lee clung to the sleeve of Gaara’s kimono to avoid stumbling in the darkness. 

He kept himself from panicking by whispering inane questions to Gaara: “Are we almost there?” and “Have you eaten since we got back?” and “Why does he want to see _me?_ ” Gaara’s monosyllabic responses (“No”, “Yes”, a wordless grunt) were the only things keeping Lee from fearing that he had been abandoned down here in the dark, that Gaara would vanish before they arrived and Lee would be left there forever.

Gaara stopped short, and Lee collided with his back with a hissed apology. 

Lee cast his hands out tentatively, and felt only stone in every direction. Even the passageway through which they’d come seemed to have been swallowed up by solid rock. Lee’s breath was tight in his chest. He’d never thought himself claustrophobic before this moment.

Gaara muttered something under his breath that even the worm magic in Lee’s ear couldn’t translate. 

“He moved the room,” Gaara explained, after a moment’s mutual fumbling in the dark. “He does this every so often. I don’t know if it’s because he’s testing me or if he just likes to see me mad, but …” 

Gaara turned so that his chest was flush up against Lee’s. 

“Hold still,” he whispered, his hands groping past Lee’s body to brush up against the stone. 

Lee scarcely dared breathe. He could feel every muscle in Gaara’s thin chest; every gust of Gaara’s breath danced across his skin. Gaara’s proximity was doing nothing to tamp down on the panic rising in his throat. 

“Ah—” Gaara practically climbed Lee’s chest to reach a spot on the wall over his shoulder. A gasp crested the back of Lee’s throat, but he bit it back. “Here.” 

There was a scraping, groaning noise, and the rock behind Lee slid away. He nearly fell backwards onto his bottom. 

Yellow light flooded the little stone chamber, which Lee could now see was no bigger than a futon cupboard. Gaara’s hands on his waist turned him around and pushed him into the room beyond. 

The room was massive, but it was so full of a hazy, gold-tinged smoke that its true size could barely be discerned. The smoke hung low on the ground like fog, curved around the huge stone columns that propped up the distant arched ceiling like a slumbering cat, climbed the walls like vines on a trellis. The air smelled like copper and ashes. 

The feature dominating the room was a sizable throne, carved from the same white sandstone that had made up the palace walls near the desert and engraved with sigils in gold that swum when Lee tried to look directly at them, evading his focus. 

“You found me easily enough,” boomed a voice from afar. “I’ll make it more difficult next time.” 

“Father.” Gaara bowed, and Lee hurried to mimic him. “You requested an audience with the human.” 

“Come closer.” 

Lee eyed Gaara nervously, but Gaara just lifted his chin and began walking towards the throne, his face a flat mask that betrayed not the slightest flicker of emotion. Lee tried to steel himself similarly as he followed, though he suspected from the nervous flush burning his ears that he was much less successful in hiding his feelings. 

The throne’s seat appeared to be empty. Lee’s eyes darted all around the room, his hand hovering on the knife’s hilt at his waist, wary of a sneak attack. The golden smoke on the ground was so thick, Gaara’s father could be hiding anywhere. 

“How have you found your stay in our lands?” The voice resounded around the room, so loud that it hurt Lee’s ears. 

“It’s been …” Lee struggled to find his voice. “... It’s been wonderful! Gaara has been very kind to me.”

“Kind,” the voice said, and Lee realized it was not coming from the throne. In fact, it was coming from no particular direction at all. The sound was vibrating straight out of the smoke. “That is the problem.” 

“Father,” Gaara began, stepping so that one shoulder was in front of Lee’s body, “I just need more time—”

“Silence!” the voice clapped like thunder; the stone rang with it. “Time. You have been given much _time_. The boy has lived among us for too long, yet he refuses our food and our drink. He offends us with his denial of our hospitality.”

“He does not—” Gaara started, but then he snapped his mouth shut with a gnashing of his fangs, looking down at the floor.

“You control him,” the voice boomed, “and yet he does what he pleases. You have been idling away, wasting your time and mine. Waiting. And for what? For him to fall in love with you of his own accord? You took his name. You could order him to love you and be done with it.” 

Lee’s mind whirled. His name … the name Gaara refused to tell him. _It would hurt you,_ he’d said, and Lee hadn’t understood.

He understood now. 

“I won’t.” Gaara looked up at the throne, his brow wrinkled slightly, and his golden eyes sparkled with a defiant rage that Lee had never seen on him. 

“You refuse my order?” The smoke trembled, simmering hot and furious. “Either you bid him, or I’ll take his name from you and bid him myself!” 

“No.” 

Gaara glowered. The skin of his face rippled, his expression distorting. The curse mark on his forehead bulged, darkening from blood red to purple, its shape warping and shimmering. It grew, sending wriggling purple marks crawling across Gaara’s face and down his neck like a swarm of insects. He bared his teeth, and his fangs were longer than Lee remembered them, sharper, like a mouth full of daggers. This was not the wry, toothy smile he sometimes gave Lee, no smirk with an exposed canine. This was a snarl. 

His voice hissed and spat and warped, and even through the worm magic in Lee’s ear, he could only make out every other word.

“You will not harm him … He is under … protection … my guest … mine.”

The floor began to shake. 

Lee’s fingers trembled. He was scared to touch Gaara. His claws had grown and sharpened, his hands swollen into paws. The surface of his skin swam with the inky purple of the curse mark, the writhing dots and symbols flowing down off his skin and onto the floor, into the air. Lee had no way of knowing if it was safe, if touching Gaara would cause those curse marks to swarm up his own skin. If human touch would make Gaara turn that animal rage on him.

He reached for him anyway. 

His fingertips found the back of Gaara’s hand. 

Gaara turned to him. His face had lengthened into a tanuki’s snout, so that he looked more beast than man. But the expression in his eyes was pleading.

“Escape,” he whispered around a mouth full of fangs. 

The walls vibrated as though an earthquake’s epicenter were right below their feet.

Lee froze, rooted to the spot. 

“But you—” Lee’s voice wavered.

How could he leave Gaara like this, under the threat of his powerful father? More than that, how would he even manage to flee, with the chamber sealed? His fingers clenched in his sleeves … and crumpled around a dried piece of kelp. 

A crack split the back of the massive stone throne at the head of the room. 

“Go!” Gaara roared. “I’ll find you!”

Lee jammed the kelp behind his ear, and his whole body rippled as if struck by lightning as he became invisible.

“Where did he go?” The chamber walls shook. The golden smoke surged and writhed. “Where. Is. He?” 

“Gone,” Gaara growled, a grin on his face that made him look crazed. “Safe.” 

But Lee wasn’t quite out of the woods yet. The golden smoke was thick, and invisibility didn’t mean intangibility. He could still be heard, or felt. It was only a matter of time before his shape in the smog was detected. 

There were flecks of water on the stone floor, where the smoke parted around Gaara’s feet. Sweat, maybe, or saliva. Or—Lee glanced at the dampness gathered at the corners of Gaara’s dark eyes as he shouted—tears. 

_Stand at the edge of the water_ , Lee heard Gaara’s soft voice over the inhuman shrieks that echoed around the throne room. 

But it was such a small amount of water, would it even work?

One of the columns holding the roof fast gave way. Great chunks of rock crashed to the ground. The golden smoke spiraled up like a typhoon, whipping around the room. 

The voice of Gaara’s father howled, and Gaara screamed back, unintelligible.

Lee had no other choice. He put the toes of his slippers right at the edge of a single drop of water. 

“Water will not drown me,” he whispered, scarcely breathing. His body went numb with cold. “Fire will not burn me.” His skin scalded. His vision faded around the edges, tunnel vision closing in. “The earth will see me home.” 

His whole being winnowed down to a speck.

Then everything went black.

* * *

Lee came to in the pile of pillows in Gaara’s room. 

He sat up with a jolt, gasping. Gaara wasn’t safe. Lee staggered from the bed and immediately dashed for the pile of rusted, cast-off weapons. Gaara could still be with his father, hurt or imprisoned or _dead_ , and Lee didn’t know how to find his way back. He needed to get help—Temari, Kankuro, somebody who could track him down. They could launch a rescue mission—!

“Ahem.” Someone cleared their throat. 

Lee looked up with a start to find Gaara sitting on the cushions by the fire.

He looked just the same as always. The skin on his face was matte brown and poreless, the blood-red curse mark shrunk to its regular size. His teeth all fit within his mouth; his claws were short again. He was a little wan, maybe, but overall no worse for wear. 

At first, Lee didn’t believe it was him. 

“Is this a trick?” He took a few steps back, wary. He groped for his waistband but found it empty.

Gaara held up Neji’s knife, its carved bone handle reflecting the firelight. “I didn’t want you to stab yourself in your sleep.” The corner of his mouth twitched; the hint of one canine at the corner of his lip. His eyes were soft.

Nobody else in the world—above ground or below—looked at Lee quite like that.

Lee ran to him.

“Are you okay?” He skidded to a stop and kneeled on the edge of the same cushion Gaara sat on. He pushed his fingers through the rough shag of Gaara’s red hair, seeking any hidden injury.

Gaara stiffened, but let himself be examined. “I’m fine.”

“But how?” Lee’s fingers ran down the length of Gaara’s arms, up the sides of his face, down the knobs of his spine, as if challenging the truth of it.

“The throne room is mostly rock,” Gaara said. “And I can control the earth.”

Guilt surged through Lee. He had left Gaara behind to face that all on his own; he had saved his own skin like a coward. He should have stayed to help, though he didn’t know what he would have done, exactly. But he could have at least made sure Gaara was safe.

“I’m sorry I ran.” He looked down at the floor, shamefaced.

One of Gaara’s claws guided his chin back up. “Don’t be,” he said, and his expression was deadly serious. “If you had been in the throne room when it collapsed, you would have died. I couldn’t bring the walls down with you still inside.”

“Does that mean it’s over?” Lee searched the golden irises of Gaara’s strange eyes, which were no longer quite so strange to him. “You won?”

“No.” Gaara exhaled heavily. “Father will regroup soon enough, and then there will be hell for me to pay. But for the time being, we can relax. Luckily you were easy to find. I thought I’d have more trouble looking for you.”

“The spell …” Lee pursed his lips, muttering. “… it brought me back here?”

“You were fast asleep in the pillows when I returned.” A little smile danced at the corner of Gaara’s lips, the hint of one pointed canine exposed. It softened him, somehow, making him look both more and less human all at once.

Lee almost reached for him, but then his stomach growled, louder than any ravening beast. 

“You should eat, then rest some more,” Gaara said pointedly. “Magic drains your energy.” 

There were still two chestnuts in the pocket of Lee’s _haori_ , the very last ones he had. He peeled them from their sea urchin shells in short order and devoured them before Gaara could even blink in wonder at their existence. 

Then he trotted over to the pile of pillows and laid down, waiting for Gaara to join him. _The place he felt safest._ He had to admit it was true; he relaxed the moment his body hit the haphazard pile.

Gaara moved slowly, gingerly as he crossed the room. He was more tired than he let on, Lee thought, head swimming with drowsiness. He collapsed beside Lee on the pillows with such heaviness that stray bits of cotton escaped their weave, fluttering through the air like the fat flakes of falling snow. 

Gaara pulled an unfolded kimono up over Lee and tucked it around his body. He lay down beside him and twined his fingers through Lee’s hair. 

Lee’s final mistake was falling in love.

* * *

He awoke some hours later, weak and feverish. Everything felt muggy and distant. He had sweated through his clothes and the makeshift blankets thrown over him, and his skin prickled with a diffuse pain, as if he had overworked every last muscle. His eyelids stuck, gummed closed with sleep, when he tried to open them. 

Gaara was nowhere to be seen, but there was hardly time to look for him before the sound of spilled grain filled the room, and Gaara manifested beside the pillows. His face was drawn tight with worry. 

With him was a very old woman Lee had never seen before. She was shorter even than Gaara, her posture stooped. Her face was caked white and deeply lined. Under her shaven and repainted eyebrows, her eyes were so heavily lidded, Lee could not see what direction they pointed. She moved towards him with an odd, uneven gait, and Lee realized through his fever-haze that below the hem of her layers of moth-eaten robes were a half-dozen black-plated insects’ legs. 

“You’re awake,” Gaara breathed. He knelt by the pillows and pressed the back of his hand to Lee’s forehead. His skin was pleasantly cool on the stickiness of Lee’s sweaty brow. “How are you feeling?”

Lee’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, dry and leaden. 

“Hot,” he managed to say, finally. He felt the corners of his lips crack when he spoke.

Gaara’s brow furrowed, his expression wracked with concern. “You’re burning up.” Gaara indicated the wizened old crone over his shoulder. “This is Lady Chiyo.”

Lady Chiyo scuttled closer. “Stop hovering.” She nudged Gaara out of the way with a surprisingly ferocious check of her shoulder against his. “You interrupted my nap for this, so let me get a good look at him.” 

She rubbed her hands together. She had human hands, the skin crepe-paper thin and bulging with blue veins. Age spots dotted her forearms when she rolled up her sleeves. Her hands began to glow with a faint light. 

She touched Lee’s forehead. Her hand was hot, and Lee winced away from it with a hiss of pain. 

“Hold him still,” Chiyo commanded through soot-black teeth.

Gaara quickly shuffled into the bed behind Lee, pulling Lee’s limp, damp body into his lap. 

“You have to let her help you,” he whispered into the crown of Lee’s sweat soaked hair. 

She reached for Lee’s chest next, and Lee’s whole body flinched to try to get away from her. 

“Not there,” Gaara said sharply.

Lady Chiyo drew her hand back, widening her eyes in a look of warning. Lee noticed then that it was not the lids of her eyes that prevented him from knowing which direction she was looking, it was that her entire eyeball was flat black, shiny like a beetle’s shell. 

“Somewhere else,” Gaara suggested. “Anywhere else. You’ll hold still, won’t you?” He murmured this last bit to Lee’s blood-hot ear. 

Lee mumbled a noise that was intended to be assent. 

Lady Chiyo ran a hand along his stomach. Her touch seared. Lee gritted his teeth and endured it, though his head canted back against his will, his shoulders squirming in Gaara’s lap. 

Gaara made faint shushing noises in his ear, wordless whispers of reassurance. 

Finally, Lady Chiyo drew away. Lee’s body fell heavily to the pillows. 

“What sort of hex did my father put on him?” Gaara hissed urgently. He sounded frightened. Lee wished he could reach up and brush the fear from his face, but his arms were as heavy as sandbags, leaving craters in the pillows.

“He’s not hexed.” Lady Chiyo turned and began to walk away, her pointed feet clacking on the stone floor. Behind her dragged the segmented tail of a scorpion. She stuck both her hands into the fireplace and, after a moment, pulled them out again, shaking them off. “He’s been down here a long time, to not have eaten our food or drank our water. Most humans would have died by now. Though I suppose hardiness might be part of his … unique qualities.” 

“But he ate something right before he went to sleep,” Gaara said, urgency heavy in his voice. “And before we went to see my father. I thought that he …” 

“Thought that he what?” Lady Chiyo’s voice was sharp.

“Never mind.” Gaara shook his head. “Did it make him sick?” 

He shook Lee’s shoulder roughly, and spoke so loudly that it was as though he thought Lee were hard-of-hearing instead of ill. “What did you eat earlier?” 

“Chestnuts,” Lee mumbled.

“Ch—?”

“From home. Bu’ there’s no more ...” Lee rubbed his head against Gaara’s stomach. He wished he would touch his face again with those cool hands. It had felt so nice. 

“Ah,” Lady Chiyo said shortly. “I see.”

“What do you see?” Gaara’s voice was sharp, as fanged as his mouth.

“His soul’s in two places.” 

Lee could feel Gaara’s claws through the fabric of the _kosode_ on his shoulders as his hands tensed.

“He’s probably been eating them all along,” Lady Chiyo explained. “Food from the upper world kept him alive, but it tethered his soul there, too. Now that it’s gone, that tether is breaking. His spirit is shearing in two.”

“So fix it.” Gaara’s voice was commanding. “Heal him.” 

“It isn’t something that can be healed.” Chiyo shrugged her shoulders with a clicking of articulated joints. “He has to make a choice. He can eat our food, and bring the rest of his soul down here … or he can leave. Though I don’t know he’d survive the journey to the upper world in his condition.” 

“And if he doesn’t—” 

“Then he dies.” Chiyo’s tail swished through the dust on the floor. “I’ll be going now,” she said. “I’ll send your brother down with some food and water. The boy’s a little delirious from his fever, but when he’s more present, try to explain it to him. I doubt he wants to die on you. He seems rather … attached.” 

Lee was struggling to keep his eyes open. Gaara’s claws anchored him to the earth, the only thing keeping him present. 

Then Gaara loosened his grasp. 

Lee’s vision faded. He wasn’t aware of anyone coming or going, but the next thing he registered was Gaara pressing the rough-hewn edge of a stone cup to his lips. 

Lee tossed his head to the side. Water splashed on his clothing, on the heavy fabric layered atop him. The fire in the room was blazing. He was suffocating from the heat.

“Don’t be stubborn,” Gaara scolded him. “Drink the water.” 

“Bu’... goin’ home …” Lee trailed off. 

Gaara hauled him upright by the shoulders, with a strength belied by his small stature. He stared at Lee intently, golden eyes right up close. His clawed hand cupped Lee’s cheek. The skin of his palm was chill, and Lee nuzzled into it, his upper body wobbling to stay upright. 

Why wouldn’t Gaara just let him lie down? Then they could cuddle again, and Gaara could touch Lee’s hair with those cool, rough hands. It would be so lovely. 

“Please,” Gaara urged him. “Just one mouthful of water, or you’re going to die.” 

Lee shook his head so hard he thought he might fall. 

There was a momentary flurry of motion, the clatter of a cup being set down, and then Gaara was closer. His lips were shiny. They looked so soft. 

Lee leaned in, eyelids fluttering. 

Gaara closed the distance and kissed him. 

Gaara’s lips were just as plush as they looked, as cool as the rough skin of his palms. He smelled like dry earth and old paper. His clawed fingers crawled up into the sides of Lee’s hair and tangled there. 

It was everything Lee had never known he’d wanted. Everything he hadn’t dared to even _think_ about wanting. The kiss was sweet and intense, the soft slip of Gaara’s lips distracting from the ache saturating Lee’s muscles. His heartbeat stuttered. Every touch felt all the more intense on the febrile heat of his skin. 

Gaara parted his lips, and Lee opened his mouth in return. 

Something cool and crisp flooded Lee’s tongue. He swallowed the water instinctively.

The water. 

Water from the world underground. 

Water that could chain him to this place. 

Lee reeled backwards, suddenly alert. He tried to spit the water out, rubbing at his mouth, spluttering. But it was too late. The heat was already dissipating off his skin, his vision clearing. 

“You lied!” Lee shouted. He wheeled backwards across the pillows, legs kicking upholstery every which way. “You said you wouldn’t make me!” 

Gaara’s eyes were wide with shock. His hands reached out for Lee and closed on air as Lee threw himself to the stone floor and scrambled to standing. 

“You were dying,” Gaara whispered, still on his knees, an ashamed furrow on his still-damp lips. 

“I want to go back!” Lee yelled. 

And suddenly he understood how.

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the end! Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. This story was really such a joy to write. I hope you've enjoyed it. 
> 
> There are no chapter-specific warnings this chapter.

The water was heavy in Lee’s stomach, tugging at him as he hastily gathered up his things. But it couldn’t keep him there. Nothing could, once Lee had his mind made up. He was a creature of sheer will and determination, and nothing would stand in his way. 

The pathway back to the human world opened up in his mind like ripples spreading in a pond from a dropped stone. It was all so obvious. 

_Think of what you left behind,_ Gaara had said, and all this time Lee had been grasping at faint memories of his friends, his teacher, searching his recollection for their faces and voices. He should have known, looking at the beloved trash scattered around Gaara’s room, seeing the magic that animated Kankuro’s dolls. It wasn’t about _people_ at all. He’d meant the human attachments that clung to well-known objects. 

Gaara had called him _clever,_ but Lee was a fool not to have thought of this. 

He threw his _haori_ around his shoulders and tucked his lone straw boot over his sash next to the hilt of Neji’s knife. He kicked his soft-soled slippers aside and stood barefoot by the fireplace. 

“I’m going now,” he announced. 

Gaara had gotten to his feet as Lee had been puttering, and now he stood nearby, not giving Lee nearly enough breathing room. His eyes were as heavy on Lee as the touch of hands. 

“Fine,” he said, “but I’m coming with you.” 

Lee’s mouth dropped open. 

“But—” he sputtered. “You can’t!”

“Why not?” 

“Because I’m mad at you! You tricked me!” 

“You’re still weak.” Gaara crossed his arms over his chest. “Be angry if you want, but I won’t let you die. As long as you’re here, you’re still under my protection. I’ll see you above ground to make sure you’re safe. And then …” Gaara sighed, dropping his defiant stare from Lee’s face to look at the ground. His arms tightened around himself. “... if you never want to see me again, so be it.” 

“But—what about your father? Won’t he be mad? He’s still out there, you said! He’s still dangerous—”

Lee couldn’t help but worry. He may have been upset with Gaara—furious, really—but he still cared for him.

Gaara had kissed him. Lee had been _kissed_. His very first kiss. And he’d liked it. He’d wanted more. He would have done it again, fever or no fever, dying or not.

Of course, that was, if it hadn’t all been a trick to keep him here.

His heartstrings twanged. 

Gaara looked up from the ground to Lee’s face. There was something dangerous glimmering in the intensity of his stare, a willpower strong enough to rival even Lee’s own. 

“All the better,” he said. “He would have banished me anyway, for failing.”

And that word told Lee all he needed to know. That Gaara’s kiss had been nothing more than a desperate gambit, a last-ditch effort to snatch success—and Lee’s love—from the jaws of failure. 

Lee rubbed at his chest. He hadn’t been wearing his bindings since he’d been below ground, but his chest hurt now as if he’d run for kilometers with them on. 

“I just need a moment.” Gaara stooped to poke through some boxes, containers that Lee had never seen him touch before and had mostly forgotten about. He didn’t recall what was in them, though he was sure he’d been the one who’d tidied them away.

Even the neatness of Gaara’s room rankled him right now. What a waste of his time it had been. 

He could have left right then and there, while Gaara was still futzing about with the boxes. But something made him hesitate. Maybe it was the way Gaara had feared for his life. Maybe it was the memory of the kiss still fresh on his lips. 

Whatever it was, he waited by the fire, hands on his hips and the hilt of his knife, tapping one foot irritably.

Finally, Gaara stood. In his hands was a crown woven from young lotus leaves. It was surprisingly green for something that had ostensibly been a box for at least several weeks, though the leaves were starting to brown around the edges. 

Gaara dropped the crown onto his head. It was slightly too large, and it hung loosely around his ears, half the leaves lost in the unruliness of his red tangles. His skin rippled, his body shimmering with a faint light. 

Lee’s grip tightened on the knife’s handle, nervous that Gaara would transform into that snarling, curse-mark-speckled beast again. 

But when Gaara looked up at him, he looked more human than he ever had before. His eyes were no longer black and gold, but the same color as the lotus leaves, though his pupils were the green of a cat’s at nighttime. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were flat and even.

His hair was still red, though. Blood red. The same as the curse mark etched on his forehead. Lee supposed there was no doing away with that. 

Gaara spread his palms expectantly, as if showing off his new hands, free of claws. 

Kankuro’s words echoed in Lee’s ears: _Cleans up pretty nice, huh?_ Lee most certainly did _not_ repeat that.

‘More human’ on Gaara was still a far cry from any other person in Lee’s village. What would Neji or Gai-sensei think if they saw someone like him walking around with Lee in the forest?

“I’ll just … tell them you’re foreign,” Lee said weakly. 

“You’ll let me meet them?” Gaara cocked his head, an utterly inhuman gesture on his newly human face. “Your friends?” 

Lee paused. He supposed he hadn’t thought about it. He’d just assumed it was inevitable. If Gaara was coming back with him, then of course he’d meet his friends and teacher. 

“Of course.” Lee frowned. “If we’re going where I think we’re going.” 

Again the trail home glowed in his mind, concentric circles around a single point. 

“And where do you think we’re going?” 

“Back to … back to where I left my things, right?” Lee had a sudden moment of panic, that he was still deluded by fever and talking nonsense. “My boot and my knife?” 

Gaara exhaled sharply. “This is why I needed to go with you,” he muttered, almost to himself. Then he shook his head, discarding the thought. “You need to pick one. Your soul is already splitting. Sending yourself in two directions would only help it along.” 

“Oh.” Lee licked his lips. Then, which to focus on? His boot, back at the crest of the ravine, probably covered with fallen leaves by now? He fingered the rough, woven straw of its twin at his belt. Or his knife, with its worn wooden handle in the shape of Neji’s fingers and later his own, abandoned just off the beaten path to the village? He ran his finger down the carved characters of Neji’s last name on the handle of the knife’s successor, tucked into the sheath that had never been made for it. 

The choice seemed obvious, then. 

He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, deeply. Until all the air seemed to have vanished from his lungs. He pictured the knife— _his_ knife—and felt its familiar weight in his hand. The memories of it flooded him. He pictured it carving notches in trees to mark his path in the forest, saw himself using its blunt edge to cut his own hair to Gai-sensei’s disappointment, recalled its blade snapping the bowstring of a hunter’s trap and freeing a poor, helpless tanuki … 

He felt Gaara’s fingers wind between his own, but the sensation was distant, muted. 

And then they were rising into the air. Up, up through the ceiling of Gaara’s room, up through stone and dirt which Lee saw through and breathed as easily as if it were air. Up past badger’s burrows and mossy undergrowth. Up past treetops still red and orange with autumn’s hues. Up until they were over—not the forest and the remains of the hunter’s trap, as Lee had expected—but directly over the winding, unpaved walkways of Lee’s little village … and an all-too familiar roof. 

Two pairs of bare feet crashed down hard on the roof of Gai-sensei’s dojo. Several of the domed _kawara_ clay tiles knocked loose and skidded down the curved roof, sailing over the edge like sleds gone rogue over a ridge. They smashed to the ground and shattered. 

There was the sound of a wooden door sliding open, feet thundering across the courtyard, and then:

“Lee?” 

Tenten was standing on the ground below them, her hair untied from its normally tidy coils and in spectacular disarray. Her mouth was so wide a whole trout could have jumped in it. 

Lee’s toes clenched against the roof tiles, struggling to keep himself upright. 

Nobody had ever called him that name before. Not even Gaara, because he had never _told_ Gaara that name. He had never told _anybody_ that name. So then how did Tenten … ? 

Gaara’s fingers, still wrapped in Lee’s, squeezed tight.

“I took the other name, remember?” he whispered in Lee’s ear. “The one you didn’t want.” 

“How did you get up there? Who’s that man with you?” Tenten’s voice was so loud that it could probably be heard three villages over. She cupped a hand around her mouth to amplify her voice further. “Hey! Get down from there so I can talk to you properly!” 

That was her lecturing tone. 

Lee sat down and scooted to the edge of the roof. Fortunately the roof was low, and it was only a short drop to the ground. He hit the flagstones with an _Oof!_ and a little cloud of dust. Gaara followed him down silently and far more strategically, dangling from the clay gutter until his feet were mere inches from the ground before he let himself fall. 

Tenten stormed over, her eyes wild with confusion and fury. She looked Lee up and down. 

“Did you … run off to join the priesthood?” She frowned. “Is that why you left?” 

Lee looked down at himself, realizing after a moment’s consideration that he was still wearing the priest’s robes under his jacket. 

“Ah, no …” He rubbed the back of his neck. “These are just, um … These are just spares!” 

Tenten cut her eyes at Gaara. “You’re a priest, then?” Her eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “Pretty funny-looking priest.” 

Gaara crossed his arms and said not a word. 

“Gaara is um … he is not from around here.”

“No joking,” Tenten drawled, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Odd name, Gaara.” 

“Tenten!” Lee hissed. “Please do not be rude!” 

“Me? Rude?” Tenten’s head drew back into her neck, her mouth a tight little line. “You just got back, and the first thing you’re gonna do is tell me off about my _manners?_ ”

“I—” Lee’s face fell. “No, of course I’m not. I’m sorry.” 

“Never mind.” Tenten waved her hand through the air, as if shooing away spirits, erasing Lee’s apology. “Come inside. Everyone’s going to freak out when they see you.” 

Tenten slid aside the wooden frame of the dojo’s back door. Inside was the familiar square room where Lee had grown up. Tatami mats were neatly arranged along the floor, and the walls were sparsely decorated with a few hanging scrolls with Gai-sensei’s favorite sayings inked upon them, though Lee had never been able to truly read them. Though the room was in fact much smaller than Gaara’s room underground, its few furnishings left it looking spectacularly large and empty. 

There were still four bedrolls laid out, one on each side of the square fire pit set into the middle of the room. Three of them were heaped high with blankets in preparation for the autumn night’s chill. The last of the rolls was conspicuously bare and unworn, as if it had been set out every night for quite a long time but never slept in. The fire had already been stoked to blazing, and in its light, Lee could make out two familiar shapes on the unused bedroll: his lost straw boot and his wood-handled knife. 

It wouldn’t have been so troublesome to focus on them both at once after all, he thought. They had both been in the same place all along. 

Tenten followed the path of his eyes. 

“We found them when we went looking for you,” she said. By the firelight, the shapes of her face were more drawn than Lee remembered them. She looked suddenly much older than the fresh-faced young woman Lee had left behind, much more mature, more worldly. “We found your knife by that old trap, and then we tried to follow your footprints through the brush … When we found your shoe at the top of that ridge, honestly, I assumed the worst.” 

Lee didn’t even have time to apologize for worrying her, because the door to the front room of the dojo was being thrown wide, and a familiar figure strode through.

“What was all that yelling about?” Neji’s voice was just as prim and stuck-up as ever, though his hair had grown quite long, its tail swinging as he walked. “I was just dismissing the students for the evening when— _Oh._ ” 

Lee’s eyebrows furrowed. Since when had Neji been allowed to teach the students? Surely Gai-sensei wouldn’t have given over his duties so easily. And where was Gai-sensei, anyway? It was unlike him to miss out on any sort of clamor or catastrophe. 

Neji crossed the room silently, pale like he’d seen a ghost. 

He reached a hand out towards Lee, then dropped it.

His knees hit the tatami mat, his head bowed. 

“I thought you had run off because I left you behind,” he said to his knees. His voice was tight and harsh with self-loathing. “I should have gone with you. I’m sorry.” 

Lee stooped down, dropping to one knee beside his friend. “Please do not worry about it. I’ve been just fine. I—”

There was a cough from across the room, followed by a shaky breath. 

“Either it’s finally my time to go, or I was right all along,” wheezed a quiet voice. 

It was then that Lee realized that one of the piles of blankets on the bedrolls wasn’t a pile of blankets at all, but a person. A person with a familiar head of shining black hair and spectacular eyebrows. 

Gai-sensei eased himself up onto his elbows. “Lee, is that you?”

“Sensei?”

“Lee!” Gai-sensei’s voice was thick with emotion, but it also sounded horribly _wrong_ , reedy and hoarse. “I knew you’d come back!” 

“Gai-sensei!” Lee dashed across the room and collapsed next to his teacher’s bedroll, throwing his arms around him. Hot tears sprang to his eyes and began rolling down his cheeks immediately. 

His teacher’s body was frail and thin, his once-firm muscles soft and wasted.

“Sensei, you need to be resting!” Tenten scolded him. “Lee, ease off on him. Gai-sensei’s very sick.” 

“Sick? What happened?”

“It wasn’t that long ago.” Neji had crossed the room and now stood beside them. “He was out in the woods. Looking for you, again. He never gave up on it, even after—”

“He tripped in a hole and broke his leg,” Tenten interrupted. “Tsunade-san managed to set the bone, and he was walking around and even teaching, but about two months later it started hurting him again. We thought it was a pulled muscle—you know how he overdoes it—but then one day he just … collapsed.”

“Tsunade-san says it’s an infection,” Neji added gravely. “It’s too deep in his bone for the medicine to reach.”

Lee’s hands fisted on his knees. “Two months?” he said to himself. “But I only left … ”

He looked up into Tenten’s face, the new wrinkles from worry between her eyebrows. He turned to Neji, his long hair hanging like a curtain of silk over his shoulder.

“How long was I away?” he whispered. 

The furrow between Tenten’s eyebrows deepened. Her expression was bewildered when she said, “Lee, it’s been three years.”

“Three _years?_ ” Lee yelped. “But I was barely gone a handful of weeks!”

Neji shook his head, looking to Tenten with frank panic on his features. “Lee, what happened to you in those woods? Did you hit your head, or … ?” 

Gai-sensei rolled over and groaned. His head nodded and his eyelashes fluttered. He had fallen unconscious. 

Lee had more important things to think about than lost time. 

“Gaara!” he yelled. 

Gaara startled upright. The flat pupils of his eyes flashed with the firelight from the room’s center. If Neji or Gai-sensei had noticed Gaara’s presence, slunk into obscurity by the door of the room, neither of them had mentioned it. 

“You have to heal him!” Lee called. 

“Me?” Gaara came to join them by Gai-sensei’s bedroll, the shuffle of his feet on the tatami mats as soft as paws padding. 

“You fixed your own arm, before,” Lee said insistently. “So you can fix him, too, can’t you?”

Gaara frowned, staring at his feet. It was strange, how far he stood from Lee, now that they were in the presence of his friends. Lee had grown so used to Gaara constantly in his personal space that now his distance ached like an absence. 

“But that was me,” Gaara mumbled, his normally sharp diction lost to the flat of his human teeth, “and this is … a human.”

“What do you mean ‘a human?’” Tenten snapped.

“Gaara is, uh, a … doctor for animals!” Lee lied poorly. “Like Hana-san!” 

Tenten raised a skeptical eyebrow. 

“I don’t think I can do this,” Gaara said lowly.

Lee reeled on him, indignation boiling his blood. “You’re not even going to try?” 

“I might make it worse. I wouldn’t know what I was doing. I was wrong before, when I thought you were hexed … “ Gaara trailed off. 

“So you’re just going to let him die?” Lee could feel his ire creeping up the back of his throat, strangling him, making his voice pitch high. 

“Your teacher is very important to you,” Gaara said to his feet. “I don’t want to hurt him.” 

Something snapped into place in Lee’s mind. 

“If you just try,” he said, “even if you fail, I’ll go back with you.” 

“Go back?” Tenten shrieked. “But you just got here!” 

Gaara looked up at Lee, his eyes huge. He scarcely seemed to be breathing. 

“Do you mean it?” he whispered.

Lee didn’t hesitate. 

“Yes.”

Gaara was right up in front of him in a half-second, grabbing both of Lee’s hands in his. 

“Swear it,” he breathed. Even though his fingernails now looked like soft white crescents instead of the black sickles of claws, Lee still felt the prick of their sharpness on his palms. 

“I swear.” His voice was steely with determination. “Try to heal Gai-sensei, and I’ll return with you.” 

Gaara squeezed his palms tight. They stung, but they did not bleed. 

Gaara nodded once, sharply. 

“I’ll do it. But I’ll need some supplies.” He turned to Neji, whose expression of frank shock at watching the whole proceedings was far less animated than Tenten’s, but no less obvious if you knew where to look. “You said it’s a bone infection?”

Neji inclined his head in half a nod.

“Go get a tree branch, about as wide around as a human femur … bring that back, and I’ll tell you what to do next.”

Neji made a consternated face, but he left the room all the same, shuffling into his outdoor shoes. 

Gaara turned to Tenten. 

“Heat some water over the fire and add … do you have soap?”

Tenten shrugged. “Just the cheap, wood-ash stuff.”

“That will work.” Then he turned to Lee. “And we’ll need your knife.”

Lee’s eyes widened. “I can’t stand the sight of blood,” he whispered. “Are you going to … cut him?”

“What?” Gaara gave Lee a look. It was a familiar look, one Lee had come to associate with himself saying either something spectacularly thick-headed or incredibly confusing. “No, I’m not going to cut anyone. We’re going to make a substitution.”

“The tree branch?” Lee pursed his lips in confusion just as Neji barged back through the door, a branch the size of a small sapling slung over his shoulder, shedding dirt on the tatami mats. 

“We’ll clean it out, and his leg at the same time.” Gaara looked over to Tenten, stoking the fire. “Is the water boiling?”

“Almost there!” She dropped a sizable chunk of the soap into the water, and it nearly bubbled over. 

“Bring that over here, and bring some cleaning rags, whatever you use to scrub the floors.” 

Tenten retrieved a rough-bristled scrub brush and several scraps of well-worn cloth. 

“Strip the bark and cut the branch lengthwise down the middle,” Gaara said to Lee. “Not all the way through, just so we can see the inside.” 

Lee pulled the knife from his sash. 

“Is that my knife?” Neji said sharply. “How did you—?”

“Focus,” Gaara hissed, as Lee set to work sawing through the branch. Gaara sat at its head, and began chanting something Lee could neither properly hear nor understand. The wood was surprisingly thin and supple, parting under his knife easily. When the bark was cleared away, the wood was white as bone. 

Lee cracked the branch lengthwise between his hands. Right down the center of the wood ran a furrow of black ichor. A smell wafted up, sickly sweet, burning Lee’s nostrils.

Tenten gagged.

It was obvious what Lee had to do. He plunged a rag into the boiling, soapy water and began to scrub away the black slime. After a moment’s hesitation, Tenten joined him. Grey water sluiced onto the floor.

Neji grabbed the scrub brush and followed behind them, scraping away solid, dried-on flecks of the dark ooze from the wood.

Behind him, Lee heard Gai-sensei moan, mumbling and thrashing. 

Gaara didn’t pause in his chanting to even draw breath. At first, the black sludge seemed to double in volume with every motion. Lee scrubbed until his elbows ached, until the reeds of the tatami mats were stained black from their efforts. Over time, the sludge diminished and washed away. Gai-sensei fell still and quiet. 

Finally, the wood was clean. White and shining wet. 

Lee wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. 

“Stand back,” Gaara said, his voice low and commanding. 

He put a hand on either side of the tree branch and brought the two halves together with a mighty clap. 

Gai-sensei screamed. 

Lee froze, stock still, just staring at the mess on the floor. The grime caked under his nails. The white wood in Gaara’s hands. 

“Is he … ?”

Gaara looked down at the tree branch. It was no longer split open, but a sharp fissure ran down its center. He shook his head. 

“I failed,” he whispered.

“Failed?” Tenten yelped, dropping the rag to the floor with a wet _splat_. The front of her white kimono was blotchy black with oily stains. “What do you mean failed? Did we … does that mean he’s … ?” 

Neji placed a hand on her shoulder. He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, as if it were too painful to look any longer. 

“The infection is gone,” Gaara said to his hands, “but the bone … it didn’t come back together properly. I don’t think he’ll ever walk again.” 

Lee’s fists unclenched. A fragile hope, its wings weak and wet like a moth’s emerging from its cocoon, struggled in his chest. “But he’ll live? You’re saying he’ll live?”

“He’s alive. He’ll live. His body is healthy. It’s just that the leg …” 

Tenten threw her head back with a sharp laugh. “That’s all?” she cried. “We can work with that!” 

“We still have his crutch from when he first got hurt,” Neji said softly. His gaze was fixed on the lumpen form of Gai-sensei’s blanketed body, which Lee saw now was rising and falling with slow, even breaths. “He got around fine with one leg before. He won’t be able to teach, but …” His normally cold eyes had softened, warmed. “We’ll take care of him.”

* * *

It was only a matter of a few hours before Gai-sensei sat up, bright-eyed and suddenly teeming with all his former vigor. 

“A feast!” he declared, balanced on his one good leg, energetically stoking the fire with his crutch. “In honor of the return of my precious student and his most miraculous friend!”

“And the restoration of your health, Gai-sensei!” Tenten called over her shoulder, hurrying back and forth from the food stores to the fire, her arms laden heavily with salted fish and sacks of rice and all manner of root vegetables. 

When the food was ready, they all sat around the square _irori_ hearth with bowls piled high with rice and thick stew. 

“Thank you very much for the food!” Lee shouted. He was ravenous. He had eaten nothing but chestnuts for weeks—or had it really been years?—and his stomach had been growling from the moment he first smelled the fish cooking. 

He jammed a heaping chopstick-full into his mouth and chewed. 

It tasted … okay. Not as wonderful as he’d expected. Not as amazing as he’d remembered. 

Maybe he had gotten a bad bite, a piece of mushy turnip or something. He shoveled in another bite. 

It was decidedly mediocre. 

He frowned into his bowl.

“You know, you look awfully familiar for a foreigner,” Gai-sensei boomed, peering over the fire into Gaara’s face. “I have a terrible memory for faces, but red hair like that is uncommon enough that it sticks in one’s mind. Are you sure we haven’t met before?”

“I …” Gaara began. His stew sat in front of him, untouched, his chopsticks neatly crossed over the bowl’s lip. 

Tenten elbowed Neji hard in the gut. “Red hair,” she whispered. “Do you remember …?”

Neji tilted his head and squinted. Then his eyes widened.

“But that was _years_ ago,” he said. “Back when we were just kids.”

“What are you talking about?” Lee was grateful for the distraction from his disappointing meal. 

“You wouldn’t remember it, Lee, you were delirious from pain.” 

“Oh yes!” Gai-sensei smacked his fist into his palm to the sound of his chopsticks splintering. Little bits of wood flew everywhere, and Tenten scowled at him warningly. “I remember now! You know, Lee, curious things have always happened around you. Ever since you were a baby in my arms.”

Lee turned to look at Gaara, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. 

“Gaara?” he prodded.

Gaara was staring off into the fire, his expression vacant. 

“You were climbing a tree …” he said finally, softly. “Your friends told you not to, because it was dangerous.” He looked up at Lee. Though he wasn’t quite frowning, his eyes were sorrowful. He gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Of course, that never would have stopped you. It just made you all the more determined to climb all the way to the top.” 

Tenten and Neji were both staring at him, slack-jawed.

“You were there?” Tenten asked archly. “I thought Lee was just … hallucinating or something, but …” 

Gaara made a small, uncomfortable gesture with his shoulders. He didn’t turn to answer her question, his eyes still fixed on Lee. “You were so high up that you blended into the leaves. From down on the ground, in the bushes, I could barely see you.” 

He swallowed, his throat working.

“And then you fell.” His voice was heavy with an emotion that Lee could not place. “I still remember the sound of your body hitting the lower branches … the crack of your arm when you hit the earth.”

“We ran to get Gai-sensei,” Neji interrupted, “but by the time we got back, you weren’t under the tree anymore. You were right on the edge of the path to the village. We thought you must have tried to walk home and then passed out from the pain.”

“There was nothing else I could do,” Gaara said. “I was just a child, too. I was much weaker then, and you were so heavy. I carried you until I heard your friends’ voices, and then I ran.” 

“The whole time Tsunade-san was patching him up, he kept talking about the boy with the red hair,” said Tenten. “We even tried to go looking for you, you know!” she yelled at Gaara. “We wanted to thank you!” 

“I thought I saw you, once,” Gai interrupted, pointing across the fire at Gaara. “Through the window. Looking into Lee’s room. A strange little boy with red hair and green eyes just like yours.” He frowned. “But when I ran outside to get a better look, you were gone. I convinced myself it must have been my mind playing tricks on me, buying into Lee’s fantasy of a mysterious rescuer. But that _was_ you, wasn’t it?” 

Lee turned to Gaara. “So when you said you had known me for a long time …” 

Gaara turned his face away. “I had to know you were all right,” he murmured. “I checked up on you every so often. It became a … hobby, of sorts, seeing what you were up to. Then the hobby became a habit, and then the habit became … something else.” 

Something burned in Lee’s blood, a thread of confusion wound around a spool of understanding. If he could just unwind it, then …

“Why were you watching us in the first place?” Neji cut in, his words sharp as the knife he had not yet retrieved from Lee’s hands. “Hiding in the bushes, like some kind of vagrant. It’s all very suspicious.” 

“I wasn’t watching you.” Gaara looked up to meet Neji’s eyes, an eerie intensity in his stare. “I was watching _him_.” He cut his eyes back to Lee. “The first human born in Lady Kaguya’s kingdom in over a century.” 

“Why do you keep saying _human_ like that?” Tenten repeated. “And who’s—”

Neji raised a hand to shush her. 

“What are you talking about?” Lee breathed. “I’ve lived with Gai-sensei for as long as I can remember. Ever since my mother …” 

“Everyone knows the story,” Gaara murmured. He reached out as if to touch Lee’s knuckles, but just as quickly dropped his hand again. “An unmarried woman, far from home and heavily pregnant, who took shelter from a storm under the eaves of an abandoned shrine. Who gave birth to a human child, halfway in the human world, and halfway in ours.” 

“But that’s impossible!” Lee’s mind sped kilometers ahead of him, a blur of thought so fast he couldn’t make sense of anything. “Gai-sensei, tell him!” 

Gai frowned. “Tell him what?”

“About how I came to live with you!” 

“Ah, well, that was a very long time ago!” Gai sat back, his eyes narrowed in recollection. “We’d had terrible storms all autumn, and winter was setting in. At first, I thought the knocking on my back door was just more freezing rain. But it got louder and fiercer, until I was worried the paper screens would tear. So I went to answer it.”

Lee nodded along, the story familiar from the dozens of times Gai had told it to him in his childhood.

“There was a woman on my doorstep. Soaking wet, with an arm full of blankets. She was young. Too young to be out alone in the rain, I thought! And then when the bundle of blankets started to cry, well … She was much too young for _that_ either.” Gai-sensei’s eyebrows drew down on his forehead, as if reliving the emotions of that night. “I tried to invite her in, to get warm by the fire. She was shivering fit to catch her death. But she refused. The only thing she wanted to know was if I could take care of you. I said ‘of course!’ and she shoved you into my arms.”

Gai-sensei grinned. “You had a healthy set of lungs on you, even then! I barely heard what she said next. But I still remember it, clear as day. She whispered me your name, and made me promise to keep it a secret, to keep it safe for you. I swore to never tell it to anyone. That’s why I called you …” A frown crossed his face suddenly. He tapped his chin. “Well, I don’t remember it now.” He shrugged. “Ah, this old mind is getting the best of me.”

Lee’s jaw hung slack. Pieces fell into place in his mind, one by one, like tiles laid on a _shogi_ board. The demon fires. His name. The _magic_ that ferried him from danger. 

“The name she told you …” Lee braced himself for impact. “... was it _Lee?_ ” 

Gai chortled. “No, no, nothing like that. That one you came up with all on your own.” 

Gaara’s eyes were heavy on Lee. He raised one eyebrow. 

Lee’s attention was drawn away from trying to decipher Gaara’s expression by the sound of Neji setting his bowl down heavily. Looking around the fire, he realized everyone else had finished their food. 

“I think …” He hesitated. But his next step was crystal-clear in his mind, the path he needed to take as transparent as the bottom of a pond with a stone dropped in it. “I think that means it’s time for us to go, now.” 

He stood and held a hand out to pull Gaara up with him.

Gaara ignored his proffered hand and instead climbed to his feet of his own accord. The lotus leaf crown around his temples was drooping terribly now, the leaves browning and wilting. In the firelight, Lee noticed his fingernails looked darker, sharper. 

He looked at Lee for a long moment, exhaling heavily. Then he seemed to come to a decision.

“You can stay,” he said, and turned to leave.

Lee’s heart dropped right out of his chest. 

“What?” Then, realizing Gaara was already halfway out of the room, he ran after him. “But my promise!” 

Gaara didn’t turn. “You didn’t bleed. I didn’t bind you. You should stay here.” He pulled the rice paper door wide with a screech of wood. “This is your home, where you belong. This is where your family is.” 

Lee slammed a hand into the wooden door frame, stopping it from parting further. 

“No!” he yelled. He shouldered his way between Gaara and the crack in the door, staring him down. “You don’t get to decide that for me! I’m tired of you thinking you know what’s best for me. Stop making my decisions without asking!” 

Gaara drew up short. He raised a hand in a defensive gesture, but there was no real threat to it, his fingers held loosely. 

“I promised!” Lee’s voice was all heat and frustration. “And I’m a man of my word, so I’m going back with you!”

Gaara looked at him sharply. 

“I don’t want you to,” he said, words clipped. “Not if you’re just doing it out of obligation.” 

Lee frowned. Was obligation all it was? Or was there something more to it? There was a tug in his belly too strong to be blamed on a small, single mouthful of water. Over Gaara’s shoulder, he saw his friends, his teacher— _his family_ , Gaara had called them—watching the proceedings with grave eyes. 

Lee had always looked to Gai-sensei for advice. He looked at his teacher’s face now, and, behind the pain of loss, he saw understanding. Gai-sensei tilted his head, inclined his chin. _Go,_ his face said, _if that’s what you truly want._

“I think—” The words choked Lee, stuck in his throat like fish bones. The thread unspooled. “I think I’m falling in love with you.” 

Gaara turned his head sharply away. “I know,” he whispered harshly. “I’ve known since you broke the curse.” 

“What do you mean _broke the curse_?” Lee’s voice rose. “I never said anything before now.”

“Saying something doesn’t make it true.” Gaara looked towards the forest beyond the dojo’s courtyard, right through Lee as if he were invisible. “Magic knows better than that.”

“But your curse mark—!”

Gaara scrubbed at his forehead with rough motions. The red mark smeared away like so much wet ink, leaving behind untouched brown skin. 

Lee’s mouth hung agape. “For how long?” 

Gaara still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Since you met my father. I wouldn’t have been able to fight him off without you. I couldn’t defy him with the curse still upon me.” 

“But Temari said breaking the curse was supposed to transform you into a monster of unimaginable power!” 

Gaara chuckled. It was a wet, ragged thing. “I was always a monster, Lee. Power didn’t change that.” 

“But—but just before we left, you said you _failed_ —”

“I _did_ fail!” Gaara snapped. “You removed my curse. You fell in love with me. And even then you wouldn’t drink our water, even when it would have killed you not to. Even _love_ wasn’t enough to make you want to stay! And now you’re just returning below ground because you’re an honest man.” He grabbed at his chest, wrinkling the fabric of his kimono, then seemed to toss the feeling aside. A few brown leaves shook loose from his lotus crown. “Well, I don’t want your honesty. I want you to be _happy._ ” 

“What if I _want_ to go back with you?” Lee reached out to Gaara’s hand, still hovering in mid-air, and took it. Gaara’s eyes snapped to his, moss-green starting to fade to gold, the sclera a darkening grey. His human disguise was falling away as Lee searched his expression.

“You would choose that?” Gaara whispered, and in his mouth, Lee could see the row of his sharp, wide-set teeth. The black corners of his eyes were wet. “You’re not just saying that because you promised?”

Lee tightened his hand in Gaara’s, feeling the familiar pressure of those sharp claws. “I think … I was wrong about where home was. Down there is where I belong. Being up here feels strange, now. If you want me to be happy, then … down there I _was_ happy. Maybe even happier.” He gave Gaara a goofy grin. “And the food sure looked good! I’d like to finally taste it!” 

Gaara’s lip twitched, like he was fighting a smile. “If you’re sure,” he said. “If that’s really what you want.” 

“I’m sure!” Lee swung his and Gaara’s joined hands between them. In the distance, someone sobbed. Over Gaara’s head, he saw Gai-sensei crying freely and Tenten mopping her eyes with the sleeve of her kimono. Neji’s eyes were dry, but his face conveyed maybe the most pain out of the three of them. “As long as I can come back to visit,” he added, loud enough that the whole room could hear him. “And not wait three years in between, either!” 

Gaara murmured, “You remember what I told you about time below ground? It can be rearranged, placed where you want it like stones in a mosaic. I can teach you how to do that. You have the knack for magic already. It’s in your soul.” 

Lee beamed at him. “Really?” 

“Of course.” He looked up at Lee and smiled. A true smile, all his pointed teeth on display. The warmth of it reached all the way up to his black and gold eyes. “Besides,” Gaara said, “I sleep all winter.” 

Lee tugged on Gaara’s hand, and Gaara went stumbling towards him, landing heavily against Lee’s chest. 

On the door’s track between them was the smallest puddle of water, the last remnants of the washing of the tree branch. Their toes were already right at its edge. A sense of _rightness_ settled over Lee. 

“Water will not drown me,” Lee whispered, his skin growing cold. “Fire will not burn me.”

Gaara’s claws stroked Lee’s heating cheek as he joined him on the last murmured line.

“The earth will see me home.”

Lee seized Gaara’s face, bent down, and kissed him.

There was a sound like sand pouring through an hourglass. 

めでたし、めでたし

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Kawara roof tiles](https://i.imgur.com/P9WTLdl.jpg) are traditional baked clay tiles that give old Japanese buildings their characteristic looks. 
> 
> [An irori](https://i.imgur.com/QKIzoRB.jpg) is a square indoor fire pit for cooking and heating water.
> 
> めでたし、めでたし ( _medetashi, medetashi_ ) is how Japanese fairytales end. It means "all's well that ends well", or "they all lived happily ever after".


End file.
